


Blindside

by csaber



Series: The Long Shot [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Mass Effect 2, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-24 12:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 36,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2581940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csaber/pseuds/csaber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped in the grasp of terrorists. Sequel to "All Angles." A collection of interconnected one-shots and miniseries featuring Commander Victor Shepard, his crew, and more, focusing on character interactions and arcs throughout the events of Mass Effect 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Illusive Man - Investments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the imminent completion of the Lazarus Project, the Illusive Man undertakes some “housekeeping.”

They always saw the star first.

A deliberate design, as with everything in his office: when the quantum entanglement communication system activated and the holographic image appeared from the floor up, they were greeted with the churning surface of dying Anadius. The luminescent array of the entire visual spectrum. And of course, the vastness of space surrounding it. The speckles of stars, among which Anadius was one of many—though not for long.

They always saw the star first, but they never recognized the symbolism.

No, the weaselly scientist only gaped as the vista overtook his world. When he laid eyes on _him,_ he drew his composure together as best he could. As expected: the Illusive Man had recruited him for his brilliance. He had other operatives with personal skills.

The Illusive Man smothered his cigarette. "Doctor Silas. You're late."

"Apologies, sir." Silas brought up his omni-tool and a haptic window. "As you requested, I've sent you the latest reports from Project Machai. I'm glad we were able to recover the data from Chasca and Binthu. We've made a breakthrough on the biochemical aspects of the—"

"I trust your report is accurate. I'll peruse it after we're done. Unfortunately, it's the last you'll be sending in a long time. Send your data to Central and erase all local copies. I'm freezing Project Machai indefinitely."

Silas's sunken eyes widened, but the Illusive Man continued, "Whatever discoveries you were on the cusp of can wait. Operator Anaya Sanchez will arrive on-site within the week to take command of your team. She'll give you the details of your new project. Don't worry. Sanchez doesn't have your expertise, but she's a more-than-capable leader. This project will require a… greater sense of direction." _Greater than you can provide._

"I… yes, sir."

"I realize this must be difficult for you, especially after the disruptions you've suffered. But the galaxy is changing, and Cerberus's situation with it. We need to be able to adapt. Rest assured that Sanchez has equally meaningful work in store."

Silas raised his eyes, the biologist appeased. "As you say, sir."

"Good." A gesture brought up a blue window next to his hand. "I look forward to the results of your new project. Doctor."

Half-paced and deliberate, his fingertip hit the dismiss key. Silas's image faded.

Another press turned his chair around towards the vast array of haptic windows. Blinking came from one of its corners: the report. Opening it created a long display: tables, diagrams, and stills, descriptions of biochemical processes down to the genetic level, of the nanotechnology in Reaper spikes.

The Illusive Man frowned, finishing his glass of bourbon. The geth acquired those spikes from Sovereign. But almost two decades prior, another Reaper device rested in the unexplored depths of Shangxi. Entombed in a crumbling temple, did the same nanites lurk inside? And for how long? What civilization, what species, had allowed it to pervert them when they turned it into an object of worship?

Then thousands or even millions of years since that civilization's fall, the device converted Ben Hislop and Desolas Arterius into mindless, shambling monstrosities, then lashed the Illusive Man across the eyes with a burning blast of lightning….

A ping cut that train of thought short. _No time to reminisce. There's always work to be done in the now._ The Illusive Man glanced at Anadius, then thanked the operative at the door and allowed her inside.

Tap-tap-tap went the footsteps of sharp high heels behind him. "More organizational changes?"

"That's for Machai Cell to know, not you," the Illusive Man said, noting to have his office swept for listening devices again.

Operator Miranda Lawson stepped up to his side, gazing at Silas's report. "We both know the reasons behind all the changes are because of my work. Housekeeping, I take it?"

"We're about to welcome a very special guest with… different tastes from ours. Cerberus needs to be presentable when he awakens. Though it seems from your last report…"

"Only for a few seconds, despite the sedatives. Any longer and we might have lost him. I'm beginning to suspect Wilson's dedication to our success. He shouldn't be making these kinds of mistakes."

"Have him watched and keep me informed." _Lazarus is too important to take risks._ "And the recruiting efforts?"

"Successful, so far. Jeff Moreau's agreed to join us on one condition: he wants to see Shepard in person before he wakes up. Jacob's little presentation of the Lazarus Project got his attention, but he isn't convinced."

A click as the Illusive Man lit up a new cigarette. "That can be done. Tell Jacob he can bring him to the research station as soon as he's able to. We'll need to start his own treatments anyways. What's important is that we've brought one of Shepard's close friends into the fold."

"He'll be grateful for the work on his legs—and for the ship—but he won't be loyal to us."

"No, but he'll be loyal to _Shepard_."

 _"A lot of terrorists think they're helping. They're not,"_ Shepard told him during the Nepheron raid. After Admiral Kahoku and the first attempt at Project Machai, the Illusive Man knew the futility of contacting Shepard then. But he did so anyways; better to be certain where the Commander stood.

Then death ripped Shepard from his entrenchment within the Alliance and the Spectres. For all the practical reasons of bringing him back to life, the Illusive Man savored the irony of Shepard's impending situation.

"What about the other potentials?"

"Jacob's on Mars right now, working on Doctor Karin Chakwas. If she accepts, she may be able to bring more ex- _Normandy_ crewmen with her. Engineer Gregory Adams, maybe."

"Kaidan Alenko?"

"A dead end. Lilium deemed him too hostile towards Cerberus."

"That's acceptable. Friction between him and Shepard might even prove desirable. Now…" He glanced aside as messages from Leng and Archer appeared in his inbox. "How would you evaluate Jacob's performance? You were spectating Moreau's recruitment."

"I was, for part of it. He was ideal for the task. Softened the blow when he revealed he wasn't exactly a Cord-Hislop representative, made Moreau more open to the possibility of working for us." Miranda chuckled. "No false identities required. He has a certain sincerity that Cerberus tends to lack."

"We'll need that sincerity to keep Shepard invested."

Miranda walked ahead towards Anadius. "All this manipulation and maneuvering wouldn't be necessary if we just installed that control chip. A simple surgical procedure would've let us put our efforts elsewhere."

"Think of the larger picture. We isolate Shepard and make him realize that we're his best chance of stopping the Reapers. Then we show everyone that he's working with us willingly, and we become more than a terrorist organization to the galaxy."

"Since when did public opinion matter to us?"

The Illusive Man allowed himself a small smile as Anadius's shifting colors cast Miranda in a silhouette. Maybe she saw how despite all the star's splendor, it was its death throes. After the tiniest slice of the universe's lifespan, it would be snuffed out, leaving only remnants adrift in the black.

The Council stood in the opaque shroud of the Serpent Nebula, convinced of their power and their invincibility even after Saren and Sovereign came close to extinguishing it. The Illusive Man sat facing Anadius and the reality it represented—and, with some arrogance, his own. "Implants," he told everyone who asked, never once suggesting an accident or a time limit. Or what came after the time limit passed.

"It doesn't," he said. "But we can't stay hidden forever."

The Cerberus of mythology, after all, did not guard the entrance to the Underworld from the shadows. _Soon. It has to be soon._


	2. Miranda Lawson - Restrained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two instances when simplicity had its last hurrah.

Two shots dropped two more mechs, giving her a clear run. Gunfire and a scream from behind. Three more rounded the corner. She turned around, aimed. One. Two. Her pistol only beeped at the third pull of the trigger. The third mech opened fire. Her shields flared blue. As did her free hand: the first gesture lifted the mech into the air, the second smashed it into the floor.

The last mech in the hallway lay in sparking pieces, but the burning station trembled with the explosions of missiles and destroyed equipment. Miranda Lawson had to applaud Wilson for his audacity. She didn't think the simpering doctor had it in him.

"Help me, please!" someone wailed, but as muffled gunfire overtook their dying screech she raced through a door. The monitoring station had several holes in its wall of camera feeds. Even then some open windows displayed a grainy mess. Fortunately the one she came for remained: her special project, lying unconscious on an examination table.

She opened a communication line to that room. "Shepard, wake up."

 

She opened her eyes at seven o'clock sharp. A few blinks brought the features of her bedroom through the dark and into view. The curves of the unlit light on the ceiling. The corner where the ceiling met the wall. Without a complaint or a thought for the comfort of mattress and sheet she climbed out of her bed. Selected her clothes for the day. Showered, dried, dressed.

One key difference: after she zipped her red dress and put on her makeup, she pulled a long blue gown and a black trencher out of her closet, then set it aside on her bed.

Out the door, her father's servants skittered up and down the hallway like ants, scrubbing the hardwood floor, polishing the marble tabletops, shaking off the rugs. One of them, carrying a datapad, nearly tripped over a hunched back. When he recovered he spotted her, blushed, and bowed his head. "Miss Lawson."

Miranda glanced over her shoulder towards the cap and gown, then headed down to the ground floor of the Lawson mansion.

"Characteristic of Mister Garnsey to respond at the last minute." Her father, cup of coffee in one hand and open omni-tool in the other, spoke to a servant at his side of the breakfast table. "Ensure we have enough champagne for him and his wife."

"Of course, sir."

"How many are attending?" Miranda asked as the servant vanished through the doorway.

"A great deal. Various executives, government officials. They all want my good graces… and yours."

Miranda nibbled on a croissant. "They want to meet me?"

"Yes, the future CEO of Lawson Pharmaceuticals." Her father sipped his coffee, eyeing her. "I don't have to tell you how important this is."

The branded lesson came through her lips: his words, her voice. "First impressions are everything." If they saw weakness, a chance that the fabled daughter of Henry Lawson might prove more malleable, they'd pounce. "I'll make sure they don't get their hopes up."

_I'm already your shadow in every way_ , she thought. _It shouldn't be hard to act it._

"Good. First things first, though, the ceremony. I suppose you're glad to be rid of all your classmates."

_All but one._ Her father had argued with himself over sending Miranda to a school rather than sticking to the private tutors. In the end he decided she needed some experience with "personal interaction." What little she got of it—at the end of every school day, the tutors were still waiting at the mansion.

"Yes," she said. "But you have a speech to make."

"The easiest part of our day."

With matters to settle in the mansion, her father sent her on ahead. Thirty minutes in the skycar brought her to the wealthy suburbs on the outskirts of the Victorian Megapolis. A brief walk took her to the grassy field beside the school auditorium. Her classmates had gathered in small circles, occupying every inch of shade. Ignoring their laughter and cheer, Miranda sat by Aaron Gainsley's statue. The sun beat down on her with no breeze to temper the heat, but that, she supposed, gave the mortarboard hat two practical uses.

The traffic on the way served one purpose: the mercy of a short wait. At the dean's call, the graduating class of 2166 lined up around the auditorium's outer wall.

_Just like rehearsal._ _A little walking and listening, then I can leave._ For a battle with the powerful at her father's mansion, she reminded herself. Her classmates were shallow and small-minded, but harmless.

"Miranda."

She turned around and frowned. "This isn't your spot in line."

"Like they'll care," Niket said with a grin.

"Miss Devine'll tear you apart if she sees you here."

"I'm giving her a present. She deserves one, after all the detention she gave me." He leaned against the wall. "Besides, this is our day."

She thought she glimpsed her father's skycar landing. Meanwhile, beneath a tall oak, a mother dropped a colorful lei around her son's neck, and several students posed together for a camera drone. "If you say so."

"You're not even a little excited? I mean, you're sixteen and you're graduating high school."

Around the corner, the layered sounds of an organ began booming through the auditorium door. The line of waving caps and swaying gowns started its procession. Miranda let herself smile. "I guess I am excited," she said, taking the first step. "To leave."

Niket chuckled. "I hear you."

This was the last time she would ever enter the auditorium, with its carved columns of stained wood, its tall walls and long windows, its perpetually clean orange carpet. The applauding, gleaming audience stood between long rows of chairs as the class of three hundred marched in single file. Her father, face set in stone, sat on the far left. For a moment their eyes met.

Just like rehearsal, Miranda took her assigned seat. _Now for the listening._

A speech from the president. A speech from the principal. And a speech from the valedictorian—a spot that Miranda could've claimed with her grades, but chose not to. Then the president returned to the podium. "Please join me in welcoming a very special guest: your keystone speaker, Mister Henry Lawson of Lawson Pharmaceuticals."

Miranda noticed the briefest of glances flicked her way as applause surged upwards. She offered slow, deliberate claps, keeping a flat face. _Do they expect me to be excited?_

Her father strutted down the side and took his spot with the same smile he used on his peers. "I suppose I can start this off saying…" He took a wide look across the audience while the sound system made his voice omnipresent in the auditorium. "'You did it.'"

This was the Henry Lawson of interviews and social functions. Miranda glanced aside at Niket and nodded at his apologetic frown.

For the next slice of eternity Miranda tried staring forward and willed time to fly by. Still, a few of her father's words cut through: "forge your own path," "take the next steps," "personal journey." By the time Henry Lawson closed his speech and left the podium, Miranda felt a sharp ache in her palms and found deep imprints of her fingernails.

Her anger had subsided once the ceremony ended and the organ sounded once more. This time, the temptation to break the practiced procession pace was almost too strong.

On the bright side, Miranda and Niket found empty shade outside. "So, what're you up to after this?" Niket asked.

"My father's throwing a party. For himself, really. I'll be spending the evening with all his corporate and political friends."

"Yikes. Real bunch of ball-twisters."

"If that's all they are, then I have no reason to be afraid of them."

"Guess not." Laughing, Niket spied something over her shoulder. "Looks like my family's waiting for me. Take care in the shark tank, okay?"

"Don't worry about me."

Niket walked past her, patting her on the shoulder. Miranda turned around, trying not to look at the waving couple. "Niket," she said.

He stopped. "Yeah?"

_He acts so casually_. The prep had practically begged Miranda's father to let her attend. Niket had to fight for every scrap of financial aid, to do all those things to secure his acceptance letter. His cap and gown looked garish and baggy on his stocky body and plain face, but he deserved them. This day wasn't hers, but it was his.

Miranda smiled. "Congratulations."

Niket replied with an even wider one. "You too," then walked away.

The moment his back was facing her, she went in the other direction, towards her father's skycar. Graduation was a battle, but the real one waited for her at the Lawson mansion.

 

An army of mechs later, the blue blips entering the shuttle bay on her map mirrored the sudden outburst of gunfire.

There had been others since she arrived. They didn't last. Miranda could've dispatched the security mechs herself, but better to keep them around as one last combat test. If her subject couldn't handle a few more LOKI mechs, then the Lazarus Project had failed. But the blue dots overtook the red, and muffled, heavy footsteps came into hearing. Miranda approached the door to her landing pad.

The lock disengaged and Wilson stood on the other side. _The last thing you did right._

"Miranda," he said. "But you're—"

Miranda Lawson pulled the trigger, then faced down Commander Shepard's pistol until her explanation proved sufficient. That was the start of the real battle. Killing Wilson was simplicity's last hurrah.


	3. Jeff Moreau - A Few Small Repairs

"You have a _fish tank?_ "

"You say it like I had a choice."

The illuminated tank cast a blue glow over a good quarter of the new _Normandy_ _'s_ "penthouse apartment." Little synthetic corals lay on the synthetic sand, but bubbles were the only moving things inside. Joker wouldn't have been surprised if they, too, were fake. _Cerberus brought a man back from the dead, why not?_

That formerly dead man was kneeling by the full-sized bed, yanking wiring out from between the deck panels. "Everywhere I go on this ship, I just see big wastes of money. This cabin, the wide corridors…" Shepard flashed him a smile, "leather chairs…"

" _Not_ a waste."

"And all this surveillance equipment." Joker spied a few by Shepard's feet. "There's a clear line between reasonable security and Big Brother in Space."

He wondered why Shepard had asked for his help bugsweeping rather than Mordin or Garrus or Kasumi, but it was a chance to talk to him in semi-privacy. "Semi," to his great misfortune, because the AI was always watching.

"How much of the cabin have you covered?"

"Just this end. Could you get the desk and the head?"

"You have your own bathroom?"

"Like I said…" The wires stopped coming. Shepard held his omni-tool to the taut root. After scanning the readout, he brought up an omni-blade and started cutting into the floor around it. "Big wastes of money everywhere."

 _Everywhere but my chair_ , Joker thought, _and right in front of me._ And that credit sink was probably the biggest one. "Right. So. Bug sweeping. How do I do it?"

"Power down everything in sight and check for emissions that shouldn't be there. Magnetic, electrical, and thermal are the usual ones."

"Got it. You know, I thought you said weren't a spy."

Shepard shrugged. "I was going to be at one point. An Alliance captain had me slated for Special Intelligence before Whitwell got me into the N program. Even after that, I got some training."

A model of the old _Normandy_ sat in the glass case by the desk, its silver hull catching the light above it. The SR-2 lay in its shadow, a display of symbolism in toy ships. _"Shinier, stronger, but a still just a copy,"_ Shepard told him before hitting Omega. Up until then, Joker had relished flying the new girl, even for the routine relay hop from Novae to Sahrabarik. The ship itself felt different—larger and more powerful on the upside, the AI's nagging on the downside—but the instruments, the cockpit, the impossible mission, even Shepard sneaking up on him in the cockpit…

 _"It's good to be home, huh, Commander?"_ The question sounded so stupid in hindsight. _Shinier, stronger, but a still just a copy._

Flipped switches and pressed buttons put the whole cabin, model ships included, in darkness. Joker opened up his omni-tool's flashlight and scanning equipment. Secret agent work was easier than it seemed. The camera he found in the back corner of the office section and the microphone underneath the desk were only small blips of electrical noise, but piloting taught him never to discount anything on the read-outs. "Might want to check your computer, too. Probably loaded with Cerberus who-knows-what."

"Noted," Shepard said over the sound of moving metal.

The bathroom had just one camera, thankfully pointed towards the sink rather than the shower. Joker cut it out from behind the wall and dumped it in the sink. "Guess Cerberus likes watching you brush your teeth."

"Not shower?"

"No, that kind of voyeurism would be too normal for them. Or someone has a toothpaste fetish. Take your pick. Anyway, think I got 'em all."

"Thanks." Beyond the glass case Shepard set aside a bundle of cables then made his way to the small stairs. "I'll ask Mordin to make sure we didn't miss anything."

"You know he'd probably just add more bugs?"

Shepard turned the corner towards his desk as the lights came back on. "You're trusting." His voice trailed off as he dropped his gaze and flipped open his computer. "Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask."

Joker stepped out of the bathroom, hand on the door. "Shoot." The way Shepard kept his back to him, eyes still on the computer, made him all too aware of the dread knotting up in his gut. _Trusting. He's gonna ask me about why…_

Shepard turned around. "Why join Cerberus?"

 _Knew it_. Probably why Shepard asked him up in the first place.

"After what they did to Admiral Kahoku, that colony on Chasca, all those marines in the Styx Theta cluster." He had that look in his eyes Joker thought was reserved for the Council or derelict stations past the viewport. Now they were on him.

"Don't get me wrong," Shepard said. "When I first saw you on that Cerberus station, that was… a nice bright spot. A familiar face. A good friend."

Joker's stomach twisted. He was "a good friend" even after Alchera.

"I'm glad you're here, but I can't understand _why_ you're here. Am I making sense?"

 _Because Cerberus hit the big undo button on the biggest screw-up of my life?_ During that first meeting in the Orbital Club, Jacob showed him data on the Reapers. Cerberus believed in the threat they posed, he said, and was better equipped and more willing to deal with it than the Council and the Alliance. They needed a pilot, the best one, the one who'd worked with Commander Shepard.

But when the talk moved to Joker's apartment, it was Jacob's trump card, the Lazarus Project, that got him. Pictures of the reconstruction process, a live feed of Shepard's body—a recognizable, _breathing_ human body, not a charred hump—on an operating table. Once he saw it in person, almost daring to touch it, he couldn't go back to the Alliance.

"Get stuck in a rut long enough, when someone offers a way out, you're probably gonna take it. Even if that someone's an ugly serial killer with kitten intestines in his mouth. Yeah, I know, it sounds like Cerberus did this heart string-tugging manipulation act on me. They probably did. But it's not like they lied about bringing you back, right?"

"Did they?" Shepard pushed himself off the desk and stepped into the bathroom. "Sometimes I wonder." When Joker stepped over, Shepard had his back to him again, arms folded. "One moment I'm…" a deep breath, "dying, the next I'm waking up on an operating ta—"

Shepard's omni-tool flared to life with an accompanying window. "Weird," he said, holding it to the shower wall. "I'm picking up electrical noise here. A lot more than the other bugs put out." He turned around and looked at Joker, eyebrow raised.

"Wasn't there when I checked. Maybe it turns on when you're standing in front of it?"

Shepard furrowed his brow as his omni-blade sprang out. When the cutting was done, he set the panel aside. Bolted to the wall was a tall, T-shaped device that had lines of red light running down its length.

"The hell is that?" Joker asked, entering the bathroom.

"EDI, what did the Illusive Man have installed in the shower?"

A beep from outside. "Shepard, I do not recommend removing that equipment. It is designed to run diagnostic scans on your cybernetic implants and send them Operator Lawson, who then ensures that they are at optimal operating capacity."

Shepard stroked his chin. "Miranda's done enough for my guts. I'm taking it out, but I'll reconfigure it to send that info to Doctor Chakwas instead. _When I tell it to_."

"Very well, Commander."

Joker watched him disconnect cable by cable and remove bolt by bolt, watched him rip the contraption off the wall and set it aside, watched his hand linger on the crossbar with a white-knuckled death grip. "This is what I'm talking about," Shepard said. "I was dead. To think that an expensive science project put everything that I was back together, it just seems too easy."

"You're still the Shepard I remember."

"With extra parts on the inside that Cerberus wants to check up on when I shower. And these," Shepard's thumb brushed one of the faint orange lines on his face, "instead of all my old scars."

The same personality, Joker thought, wrapped up in a shinier, stronger package. _But still just a copy_ in Shepard's mind, a copy without the history. Joker found himself thinking of the work Cerberus had done on his own body, all the state-of-the-art intramedullary rods that let him put away his crutches.

Meanwhile, Shepard stared into the mirror, appraising the body Cerberus had given him. _It's good to be home, huh, Commander?_

Shepard stepped back from the sink and sighed. "You know, when I was a kid I wanted bionic arms to punch bad guys and save orphans."

"When I was a kid I just wanted normal arms."

"Point taken."

"Hell, I wanted a normal everything." He spent a good part of his childhood watching big bulky marines board starships for destinations unknown, thinking that he belonged aboard with them but his body wasn't good enough for it, that his ambitions were reasonable for anyone but him. That his body didn't fit him. Shepard was probably more capable than ever, but still he faced the same feeling. "But everything _wasn't_ normal. You remember the Ursa shuttle I have on my shoulder?"

"What about?"

"First thing I got to pilot out of flight school. Kinda like my Skyllian Blitz. People get tattoos for important things—that's… normal."

"I had tattoos, when I was teenager. Gang symbols, like the number ten in big red letters on my chest. I got them removed when I enlisted, never had another. You know what I think of my gang years."

"I'm not saying you get a tattoo."

Shepard rubbed his shoulder. "I had a scar here where a sniper shot grazed me. From Elysium. It's a blank slate now." He lowered his gaze, "blank slate… Thanks."

"Hey, don't go pulling Garruses now."

"How else will I attract those krogan women?" Shepard turned to the discarded scanning thing. "I shouldn't keep you here any longer. And I have this piece of Cerberus tech to work on."

"Miranda might miss getting your daily nudes."

"I'm sure she's seen enough of me," Shepard said with a slight frown.

After a moment, Joker had to look away and will away the not unwelcome mental images. "Right. Well, have fun with that. Maybe Gardner's awful cooking will distract me from the fact that someone else is sitting in my chair."

Shepard knelt down and held his omni-tool to the scanner. "You had Junior Helmsman Pakti on the old _Normandy_."

"Yeah, but my seat back then wasn't real leather."


	4. Kaidan Alenko - Spectres

_Meet me on the Citadel, my office. Council business. I'll say more in person._

The last time Anderson sent such a message, Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko found himself and his squad in a different kind of hell from Virmire—perhaps even worse. Back then he'd committed himself to protecting that bomb to the last second, to watching the _Normandy_ fly off with Ashley Williams aboard before the world went white. Even though Shepard decided otherwise, in staying behind would've been Kaidan's choice.

On Horizon he watched Lieutenants Lamar and Kuwatani get tossed like trash into grotesque cocoons. He could only wait his turn, wide-eyed and helpless, in the shadow of a ship that forced him to watch other friends die two years ago. But then the Collectors retreated and their gargantuan vessel blasted off. And one of those friends, like a phantom, was right there in front of him.

Anderson told him about the rumors of Commander Shepard's return—a man of the same size and build wearing his armor and his face, shaking up all the criminal powers in the Terminus Systems. Kaidan dismissed them as some idiot's sick joke, or some vigilante's scare act, until Horizon.

 _"Cerberus didn't leave me much choice,"_ the apparent impostor said. _"I don't like working for them just as much as you don't like the idea of it."_ Yet Shepard had up-ended the Traverse searching for Saren. Defying the Council and breaking the _Normandy_ _'s_ lockdown was the shining moment that saved the galaxy.

 _Cerberus is the one thing you can't escape?_ Kaidan thought.

Councilor Anderson was stone-faced from across his uncluttered desk. "I'll be upfront. This is about Shepard again—whether indirectly or directly, I'm not sure. Do you know former Rear Admiral Anna Whitwell?"

"Shepard's old CO? She sent the _Normandy_ to Terra Nova to stop the batarian terrorist attack." The mission seemed like a lifetime ago. "I wasn't aware she left the Alliance."

"It was a quiet resignation, just after the _Normandy_ went down and all the white-washing spectacles that followed. She called the geth hunt that led to Shepard's death a… 'tragic waste.' Officially she returned to Earth for her retirement."

"And unofficially? Is she's acting up?"

"That's right. Intel's being leaked, classified tech's being stolen. The Alliance has evidence suggesting Whitwell is involved."

"Around the same time Shepard comes back. You think they're connected?"

"Shepard considered Whitwell one of his mentors. Both of them drawing suspicion? It's a coincidence we can't ignore. That's why I need you to investigate Anna Whitwell's activities."

 _And I can't escape Shepard's shadow,_ Kaidan thought. "Ready and able, sir."

"This would normally be a solo op. Mobilizing your squad would draw too much attention from Cerberus spies, and Whitwell might have her own contacts within the Alliance, too. But it's not just an Alliance problem anymore."

"The former admiral pulled her most recent heist on an STG facility," a voice said over the sound of the sliding door. A tall salarian, clad in black and yellow armor, regarded Kaidan with narrowed eyes before dipping his head. "Operative Jondum Bau, Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."

 

"You're sure they'll take the bait?" Kaidan asked.

"Given their previous work, I think this bait is too good to pass up."

Bau led Kaidan down the main corridor of a salarian research facility on the Citadel. Blank white walls dotted with featureless doors ran down both his sides. Two STG agents trailed him at a respectful distance, the opaque visors of their black helmets pointed in ever-changing directions.

"A prototype cyberwarfare suite."

"The thieves have only taken STG tech so far. No conventional weapons. I may have exaggerated the capabilities of our prototype in the intel I leaked, but as far as they're concerned, it's the big prize."

"Is it actually here?"

"Yes and no. The version they'd be stealing has a critical bug that causes the entire system to crash."

Kaidan let out a small chuckle as Bau ushered him into an elevator at the end of the corridor. Two salarian researchers conversed inside, but their conversation died when they saw the human. They stepped off at the next floor down. Not because of him, he was sure, but he remained aware of his other-ness.

 _Did Ash feel like this on Virmire?_ Or was she so in her element—a raging battlefield with the thunder of a thousand slugs in her ears and just as many targets for her rifle—that it didn't matter?

Kaidan, meanwhile, had entered a world where secrets made for bulletproof walls. And just like Horizon, politics had a hand in this special assignment. Councilor Anderson had him working with a Spectre, a situation that reminded Kaidan too much of Nihlus Kryik and Commander Shepard. _No Saren this time, but I guess Cerberus keeps proving what disgruntled humans can do._

The elevator opened on the fourth basement level. "Assuming that the thieves are logical people," Bau said, starting down another blank corridor, "they'll make their move when security is lowest. My leaked intel suggests they'll have a small window to get in and steal the prototype." Bau stopped at a door and pressed his omni-tool to its lock.

"And if they're logical…" Kaidan entered the dimly lit lab, a space of several workstations centered on a large circular table. "They won't come barging in through the front."

"Ventilation shafts. I've deliberately left those under minimal guard. And one conveniently drops into this laboratory."

Kaidan followed Bau's pointing finger to a square panel on the ceiling. "Got it. Any others?"

"None. You deal with thieves by forcing them into predictable moves."

"You have experience."

Bau smiled. "Indeed. Only one thief in the galaxy has ever defied my predictions, and these ones aren't her."

"And they don't know I'm here?"

"They have access to our security feeds through a very well-crafted program. I let it stay in our systems so I could feed them a sequence of various old footage."

"Spectre Bau?" one of the STG agents asked. "The thieves' window of opportunity starts in one minute."

"I know."

"All right." Kaidan rounded a work station halfway across the lab. "I'll stay out of sight until our thief shows up. They won't be expecting me."

"Especially you," Bau said, nodding. His omni-tool flared to life with a small message window. Bau's green-black eyes narrowed as he read it. "They're starting early. Security's detecting a hack attempt in the primary server room."

"But the prototype's here. A diversion?"

"Most likely." Bau made for the exit. "I'll investigate. Be prepared."

Kaidan turned towards the STG agents as the door hissed closed. Bau made it clear that the command was his in the Spectre's absence. "Find cover. When the thief comes down from the shaft, I want you two to jump first. One by one. I'll lock them in a stasis field once you have their attention."

"Understood, Commander." The two withdrew to opposite corners of the lab.

Kaidan crouched behind the workstation, keeping it between him and the thief's entrance. Uneasy silence took over the room, the false calm before a battle that paralyzed untested marines. _This isn't a battle_ , he told himself, _just a thief and a mystery._ Then why did it feel like one?

That silence remained for several long minutes. Kaidan kept his pistol at the ready and his free hand prepared to sign.

Then what little light illuminated the lab flickered and faded. Red dots lit up on the floor. _Security lockdown. Bau or the thief?_

The grating of metal boomed in his ear. Thuds of a landing followed. Kaidan dared to poke his head out from behind the desk.

One of the salarians rolled out of cover, pistol pointed at a silhouette approaching the center table. The thief flung their hands up, but the emergency lights caught the underside of a small object closing the gap to the salarian. _Get down_ , Kaidan wanted to say.

The salarian rolled again. A crack of red lightning burst from where he stood. The other agent crept up behind the thief, only for their fist to meet his visor. Something flashed in their other hand—a talon. Kaidan jolted up to his feet, dark energy flaring around him. He signed the mnemonic. The mass effect field flew and struck.

The talon was frozen just in front of the agent's face. Kaidan's stasis field held both the thief and the salarian in a pulsing blue corona. He exhaled, then brought up his comlink. "Alenko to Bau. We have the target."

"Good work. Lifting the emergency lockdown now. I'll have security sweep the station for any more intruders. Be there shortly. Bau out."

Seconds later the lights came back on, revealing a helmeted woman in black armor. The first STG agent approached with shackles, and once Kaidan lifted the field—prompting a grunt from the thief—wrangled her arms behind her back and bound her.

"You," the thief said, visor pointed at Kaidan, "you were one of Shepard's."

Frowning, Kaidan undid her helmet seals and lifted it off the thief's head. "I remember you. From the asteroid."

Elizabeth Yin turned her gaze to the floor and laughed. "Small galaxy."


	5. Thane Krios - Sins Upon Sins

Two targets marked themselves with their own photoreceptors. One shot each took their shields. One shot each took their heads. Motion at the edge of the scope: a sliding door and three new hostiles. He let the orange drone guide his crosshairs. Six shots, two each.

A crash filtered into Thane Krios's helmet as the enemy frontline crumbled. His new allies scanned the darkened room for many long, quiet seconds before the comm feed came to life once more.

"We're clear," the turian, Garrus, said.

Thane felt the tiniest ping of amusement as he stowed his sniper rifle. On Illium he had witnessed the chaos Commander Shepard sewed. Here Thane was on the  _Alarei_ , participating in it.

The man himself took a step forward, checking the quarian ship's schematics on his omni-tool. "Tali and Garrus, you're here on Deck 2 with me. Kasumi and Thane, you're up on Deck 1. Take the stairs behind us. Radio in if you find any sign of Tali's father."

"Got it," the human thief said.

Thane watched Kasumi vanish into her stealth cloak, then followed Shepard's directions up. Her blue dot on his HUD maintained a few paces' distance.

"Shepard, this isn't the best time, but the cloak I gave you…" Tali said behind him. "What happened to it?"

"Lost with my old hardsuit. This one's Cerberus tech." A small measure of distaste tinged Shepard's voice.

Tali's quiet "oh" was the last Thane caught before he closed the stairwell's top door.

Only a corridor, a single active light, and several crew quarters greeted their arrival. A handful of quarian bodies lay sprawled out inside each.

"We should identify them," Thane said.

"On it."

Kasumi's icon moved into one room. Thane entered the other. Shards of what looked like tinted glass littered the floor alongside the bodies, but Thane didn't peer past the smashed masks. _A privilege only for their own people._

"So," Kasumi said, "interesting job, huh?"

"Hm?"

"A suicide mission against a mysterious alien race, a rag-tag band and a terrorist organization fighting against the odds…"

No weapons, Thane noted, unless the geth had seized them. Still, these quarians were mere researchers. A single shot of a geth rifle was all that it took. _Efficient._

"This discussion is appropriate at this time?" he asked.

"Why not? No geth, and your line of work has its similarities to mine. Plus, you're the new guy on the ship. Color me curious."

He knelt and opened his omni-tool, then linked it to what was left of the quarians' suit systems. "Jora'Hazt vas Yanthest" and "Shila'Kai vas Antros," the IDs read. Thane commended them to Kalihira and then moved on.

"I don't think anyone ever expects to join a suicide mission," he said. "Especially those accustomed to working alone."

A unsent transmission sat on a console screen as a body lay by its feet. Thane hit "play." _"Be strong for Daddy, Jonah."_ A woman's horrified whispers crackled through the speakers. _"Mommy loves you very—"_ An explosion and gunfire cut her off.

 _A last message to her child._ Thane had poured over one regarding his own in the past few days.

When he finished his side of the quarters, Kasumi was waiting for him in the hallway. "I know that feeling. This whole 'squad' thing takes getting used to."

"Is this truly a squad? The word suggests a certain cohesion, a joining of the right individuals for each other, not necessarily the best."

"I like to think the Illusive Man's watched one too many old vids."

Thane frowned, following her into a small mess hall. "Shepard didn't choose us?"

"Nope. The way I heard it, the Illusive Man handed him a list with our names on it and sent him on his merry way."

"So Shepard isn't…"

"I'd say it's a little complicated."

 _An Alliance hero commanding a Cerberus mission._ Thane never accepted jobs that took him into human politics, but by simple reputation that notion exuded complexity in droves. _And of course, the crew._ The Cerberus agents, the master thief, the unstable biotic, the veteran mercenary, the tank-bred krogan, the salarian scientist, the turian vigilante, the quarian machinist, the asari justicar… and then Thane himself. In battle, he made himself a weapon for Shepard to wield. But joining this mission, this final job, was _his_ choice.

"I didn't scare you with this Cerberus talk, did I?"

"No."

"Hm. Guess I didn't need to worry."

"I agreed to work for Shepard. That's all that matters."

"Good attitude."

Thane checked the deck's layout as they passed through a doorway. "There's a back-up server room nearby. It could've been—"

Reflex and instinct jerked his body right. A sudden burst of rifle fire ripped through the air. He retreated past the door to the mess hall and unclipped his sniper rifle.

"Big one," Kasumi said.

Thane peeked around the corner. The geth's head almost touched the ceiling, with bulky armor and an oversized weapon to match. _Heavy shielding_ , he noted. _Armor concentrated around the upper half. Weaker around the ankles._

"I'll keep it distracted," Thane said. "Take it off its feet."

The first shot made ripples in the target's shield as the large geth advanced from the opposite end of the hallway. A rapid fire storm came his way in response. Several more shots put the thermal clip at capacity. But with the small device now attached to the geth's ankle, he didn't need to eject.

The grenade's explosion sent it toppling sideways. Its impact left a dent in the bulkhead. Kasumi appeared beside it, waving her omni-tool. The geth reached out as its shields vanished.

He emerged from cover at the five shots and the thud. "Well done."

"This?" Kasumi tucked her handgun away. "Child's play."

"I suppose this one's presence," he motioned to the dead geth, "might confirm my suspicions."

"Let's see." Kasumi approached the door to the data room and broke the lock.

_Playing the distraction. Another novelty._

Data storage equipment and access consoles awaited inside, as well as one more quarian body. Thane knelt beside it, identified it, stared at the name that appeared on the screen. He opened a comm channel. "Shepard."

 

Admiral Rael'Zorah spent his last moments with his daughter in his thoughts—as well as the promise he made to her. "A house on a homeworld," he said, and the _Alarei_ showed he did whatever he thought it would take.

_He looks up at me. Eyes pleading. "Please?" "When I return," I say. The next words come easily—too easily. "I promise."_

Thane blinked. The _Normandy_ 's engineering deck replaced the old apartment. Frowning, he remembered the short message in his inbox. _He walks a dangerous path because of me._

The door opened. "Tali," he said.

She stared at a datapad as she paced around an otherwise empty space.

Thane kept a respectful distance, hands behind his back. "I wanted to offer my condolences, but if you'd prefer solitude…"

A moment passed while Tali glanced aside. "It's all right. With EDI, we're never truly alone on this ship anyways. But thank you." She set the datapad on a station, keeping her visor pointed at a wall. "At the very least, my father's name is safe. My people won't remember him as a monster."

"And you remain a member of the Migrant Fleet. Both of you got what you wanted in the end."

"Yes… that's true. I almost forgot how persuasive Shepard can be."

"Have you known him long?"

"Two years ago, he saved my life. I repaid him by helping him defeat Saren. He helped me complete my Pilgrimage, too—the quarian rite of passage."

Thane nodded. "Your father must have been proud."

"I wouldn't know."

"You never spoke with him about it?"

"He was always distant. Maybe he expected as much of me."

"Or perhaps he was too busy with his work." With his promise. _The words come too easily. "I promise."_

"The lengths he went to…"

"Regardless of what your father did, he added a great deal of good to galaxy." Thane wanted to believe he'd done so as well, but that message made him doubt. _Not his fault. Mine._

She turned towards the drive core. Thane followed as the low drone enveloped the space around them.

"Do you have a family?" Tali asked.

"I did. A wife and child."

"Oh. I shouldn't have…"

"My wife returned to the sea many years ago. My son…" _Disconnected,_ unless Thane acted soon. But Tali did not need his personal concerns imposed over her grief. "I apologize. Another time, perhaps. I will keep your father in my prayers."

"Thank you. I have to admit, when I heard Shepard was bringing an assassin aboard the ship, you weren't the kind I was expecting."

Thane offered a slight smile as he turned and departed. "You are not the first to tell me that."

Rael'Zorah was a distant parent, but still gave up everything, even his reputation, for family. Though his methods proved monstrous, Tali followed the principle of his example. Thane could not say the same of his own distance, his own work, or his own legacy. His own _sins_. Kolyat deserved a better path.

And Thane did not want to begin his own path—a path to atonement—alone. When he returned to the life support room, he took his seat, opened his omni-tool, and began a new message:

_Shepard: I would like to discuss a private matter with you. Whenever you have the time._


	6. Garrus Vakarian - Paladins

One shot. Working on the _Normandy_ 's guns during the quiet hours or stepping over merc corpses after a shootout, he imagined holding the sniper rifle. He imagined training the reticle. And more times than he could count, he imagined twitching his finger, signal to nerve to muscle to movement. How would the corpse hit the floor?

Even as the skycar lifted away from the lot, part of him still believed he took the shot. But all Garrus Vakarian had to do was look aside.

Shepard sat in the passenger seat, dressed in human civvies save for the handgun in a belt holster. He kept that focused expression on since they arrived at the Orbital Club, but from what Garrus could discern from human faces, a hint of unease had crept into Shepard's eyes. Garrus almost said something there. Instead he focused his gaze forward on the Citadel's cityscape. After Sidonis, he'd had enough of words.

Silvery blurs and faded lights of all shapes shifted around and below the skycar. The ERC Building retained its dagger-like shape for the instant it lay outside the window. Then came the Elyssian Tower and Warehouse 211-A. Old buildings brought back old cases. Clear-cut crimes, clear-cut criminals. Either they'd take the shackles or pull out a gun and take a bullet—simpler times.

The slug would've hit just between the fringe and the left mandible. The body would've staggered, then buckled at the knees before falling on its side. But then what? Someone would contact C-Sec, they'd follow the murder right into a dead end of red tape. Personal experience told him as much.

 _"I still see their faces,"_ Sidonis said, head right in the cross-hairs.

"Thanks."

Garrus glanced at Shepard. Their eyes didn't meet. "For what?" he asked.

"For sparing him. It wasn't—"

"It wasn't easy, but it was the right thing to do, I know. That's what I've been telling myself."

_Vortash threw his arms out and spun around in the Blue Suns outpost they just captured. Thanks to Sidonis, the Suns repaid him with dozens of slugs from head to toe._

"But you don't believe it?"

He looked away. "Not entirely."

"Why?"

"When I met him, he'd led the Blood Pack to a merchant who couldn't pay the protection fee. You know what he said after I took out the mercs? 'I don't want to do this anymore. But it's all I'm good for.' So I let him play snitch for us—tell us what the merc gangs were doing, where they were going."

 _Butler_ _set up a holo of his son and daughter in his corner of the hideout. When Garrus returned after escaping the Suns' trap, the first thing he saw was smoke and fire consuming both image and man. Melenis was huddled on the floor, already dead. Erash joined her not long after—sniper shot to the head._

The skycar dipped out of the lane and entered a tunnel. "'I don't want to do this anymore.' Turns out he was lying," Garrus said. "He's on his third chance now, not his second." Garrus said.

"Not much of a third chance if he's spending it in prison."

"It's more than he deserves."

_Garrus and Sensat poured three thermal clips' worth into an YMIR's shields while Ripper squirmed and screamed in its grip. It fell, but not before a loud crunch silenced Ripper and a machine gun volley tore Sensat apart._

Shepard sighed. "Remember the 'old friend' I met here two years back? From my old gang?"

"You killed him in front of a crowd of witnesses at Chora's Den. C-Sec wasn't happy."

"His name was Finch. At one point, he actually was a friend."

"What happened?"

"We joined the Reds at the same time. Looked out for each other. Apparently, when our leader sent someone to kill me for running away, Finch tried talking him down."

"The gang went after you?" On the old _Normandy_ , Joker got Shepard to tell the why and how of his enlistment. "You didn't say that before."

"Didn't think I needed to share it. Then at some point, the Reds went from street gang to human extremists. Guess Finch changed with them. He tried blackmailing me so I'd get a Red out of turian prison."

"And you killed him for it?"

"I did."

So onlookers stared as Shepard pulled the trigger—one cold shot from a pistol, as Garrus pictured it. Fist died the same way, not too far from that spot. But at the Orbital Club… _"He's already paid for it. Ten times over."_

"So Finch and all those others you killed. Why them and not Sidonis? Or even Saleon?"

_Grundan Krul dragged Mierin's body out of the line of fire. A whole squad of Suns closed in on him. The krogan matched their gunfire in volume and potency, but in the end two Suns were left standing. Monteague and Weaver's death rattles sounded in Garrus's helmet, leaving him alone against an army._

"Because I'd be pulling the trigger?" Garrus asked. "Is that it?"

Shepard fell silent while Garrus landed the skycar. As the doors swung open, the white noise of the docking bays replaced the low hum of the drive.

Garrus stepped out first. "Let's talk later."

"We will."

"Commander Shepard!"

Shepard looked at the waving figure. "Miss Wong?" he asked. "This might take a while." With that he jogged into the Citadel crowds.

"A lot of good people helped solve this case." The familiar voice came from behind, filtered through electronic static. Garrus turned around. On a display screen, Chellick held himself at a military ready as he spoke to a reporter. "Some of them aren't with C-Sec anymore, but I have to thank them for their contributions regardless."

The reporter, a human woman, turned towards the camera and smiled. "There you have it, from the words of the Vice-Executor himself. Back you, Naryala."

The screen cut to an asari at a news desk. An image of a volus was behind her, with "Tovar Bol Convicted" stretched across it in big letters.

Another cut brought Councilor Sparatus himself on. "Let it be known that I in no way approve of these appalling activities. As a member of the Citadel Council, I swear I'll do everything in my power to ensure that Tovar Bol remains in prison for what he's done, and that reparations are made to his victims' families. His replacement will undergo significant background checks, as will the rest of my advisers. This will not happen again."

C-Sec did it. The judiciary did it. This was the exception to the rule, no doubt, but Garrus's cases too often followed the latter rather than the former. Still, he welcomed the tinge of relief. Things had gone right.

"Well," Shepard said, stepping up beside him, "that actually didn't take long at all." He glanced at the news feed. "What's this?"

"One of my last cases at C-Sec. Tovar Bol was funding Saleon's labs, getting rich off the black market organ trade. I tried exposing him. Chellick blocked me." _"One Councilor Sparatus's chief advisers," "key to the economic recovery of the Citadel," "other problems could use your skills…"_

"Chellick? You mean the detective who had a civilian informant at Chora's Den?"

"He became Vice-Executor after Saren's attack. That changed him."

"This is why you left? Went to Omega?"

"Yeah," Garrus said. "More or less. There were other cases, still ran into the same red tape. Guess I have a habit of picking the hard ones."

"This one turned out all right in the end."

Tovar Bol's image swapped for another story. Garrus followed Shepard to the _Normandy_ 's bay. "Took them two years, but… yeah."

Sidonis said he'd turn himself in, that he'd find some way to repay Garrus's mercy. Maybe the third chance was the one that stuck.

As the docking arm swept around and over them, Shepard glanced over his shoulder. "You were right, by the way. About it being you pulling the trigger."

"Why?"

"This whole thing, with Harkin, the Blue Suns, Sidonis… You're better than this." He stopped just at the airlock even as it slid open. "More than that though, I need better people than _me_ on this ship."

_More jumped over the barricade. Two humans, a woman disdainful of her surroundings and an older man with a near-ruin of a scarred face. A figure in black armor joined them. Garrus zoomed his scope in and dared to hope when he saw the human characters and red shape emblazoned on the chest._

Shepard gave the new _Normandy_ a long stare. "This Cerberus ship."


	7. Kaidan Alenko - Pieces on the Board

_This is going nowhere._

One bright white light cast the angular blocky shadow of an interrogation rack. Spectre Jondum Bau circled it like a predator from the darkness of the tiny room's edges. The view seemed something like a scene from a vid, the kind Jenkins went on and on about in a past life. At least Kaidan _had_ a view. Yin, shackled to the rack and no doubt near-blinded by that light, kept her eyes focused on where the wall met the ceiling.

Shepard never resorted to this. _He either won them over with kindness or had them stammering with a gun to their heads._

"Answer the question," Bau said.

"I should've expected the Alliance to show up. We're a Council race now. Too bad our Councilor's done nothing for us."

"I said, answer the question. We know you work for former Alliance Rear Admiral Anna Whitwell. She was always a known potential troublemaker. Is she planning to use STG technology against the Batarian Hegemony? It seems the logical conclusion, given her rhetoric."

For that Yin fell silent. Kaidan and Bau exchanged a glance.

"Are you with Cerberus?" Kaidan asked.

Yin scoffed. "I know about the colony on Chasca and Admiral Kahoku. A pro-human group who experiments on and murders humans isn't pro-human at all, just crazy. I guess that makes the Alliance crazy, too, huh?" Her lips curled into a bitter smile as she turned her gaze to Kaidan. "They let Shepard die in some backwater star system hunting phantom threats. Doesn't that count as murdering him? And you were in the Terminus Systems recently, chasing a myth for them. What if you died there, too?"

Shepard agreed to eliminate the geth holdouts because it might've led to something useful, even if the Council and the Alliance were throwing him under the rug. _She doesn't think the Collectors are real, or the Reapers._ He wanted to throw her words back at her. Virmire and Alchera and Horizon—those losses meant something.

"The Horizon operation was classified information," Bau said.

Yin shrugged. "I keep up on current events."

Bau stopped his pacing and opened up his omni-tool. "Come in and return the prisoner to her cell. We're done."

At Bau's gesture, Kaidan followed him past the two entering guards. Tomorrow, if the routine stuck, Bau and Kaidan and Yin would return to their spots. Bau would try a new angle with his questions, and Yin would reply with the same nothings.

"This isn't working," Kaidan said.

"I know."

"Then why…"

Elevator doors opened before and closed behind them. "Why continue these ineffective methods?" Bau asked. "To establish a pattern. Patterns are meant to be exploited or broken, and we're going for the latter. I've sent a data package to you. Look at its contents before tomorrow."

"What is it?"

Bau smiled. "You'll see."

 

There were two security cameras, one inside the cell and one outside. Both had cylinders that jutted from the ceiling, but those were only decoration. The actual cameras were nigh-indistinguishable from the metal panels. The STG invested a whole lot into deception—more than Kaidan thought.

At the very end of the cell block, past a rippling mass effect field, Yin sat cross-legged on the floor. "So," she said, staring at the corner of her cell. "It's your turn now?"

Kaidan glanced at the two salarian agents at his side, then nodded. "Just a few questions."

"What, does the Spectre think I'll talk to you just because you're human? Or because you served under Shepard? How long did that last, anyways? A few months before the Council got him killed?"

"I'm here for my own curiosity. Otherwise you'd be in the interrogation room."

Yin let out a chuckle. "Fine. Take your shot."

"So you think Shepard's death was a—"

"Whitwell called it a 'waste.' Not the word I'd use. I say, 'damn stupid.' He could've done more than fight Saren's leftovers, yeah, that's a waste. But I lost a _friend_."

_I did, too,_ he almost said, but he had to save the personal cards. "That can't be why you turned on the Alliance."

"I didn't _turn on it_."

"You've stolen intel and tech from us."

"I prefer 'putting it to better use' over 'stealing.' It's not like the Alliance knows what the hell it's doing anymore."

So Whitwell and Yin were operating outside the Alliance to pursue something they couldn't while within it—or to do something that the Alliance couldn't. The batarians seemed the obvious target. The Alliance had beaten the Hegemony time and again, but it never moved to destroy it outright.

_"A lot of terrorists think they're helping,"_ Shepard once said, before he joined Cerberus.

_Now to act._ "I see." He brought up his omni-tool. The two cameras required three codes: one to access the system, two for each of the cameras. The cells worked the same way.

The mass effect field flickered and died. "Commander?" one of the agents asked. "What—"

A field of his own slammed both of them against the wall. Not looking at the unconscious bodies and ignoring the twist in his gut, Kaidan entered the cell and released Yin's shackles.

Yin shot him a suspicious glare. "The hell?"

"We only have a small window to work with. Security's light, but we'll still have to fight through Bau's mechs." He placed a spare pistol in her palm. "Do your people have a rendezvous point?"

The glare persisted for several seconds as Yin's eyes scanned him. Kaidan kept his expression as flat as possible, though he still felt his apprehension coloring it.

"Yeah," Yin said, standing. "Escape route?"

"Stay close."

 

The run took them from narrow hallways to narrow alleys as a Tayseri Ward slum pressed in around them—as did the curious stares of its alien residents. Kaidan and Yin had long changed into nondescript civvies, but their movements still suggested trained soldiers, not the Citadel's lower class.

Each of Yin's step seemed to carry purpose for her, though not to the point of being rigid. A mugger could expect a kick to the gut while they were mid-jump. Not a surprise, of course. Whitwell thought her an adequate replacement for Shepard. More than adequate if the former admiral let Yin in on her plans.

His earpiece crackled. _"Completed the sweep,"_ a salarian said. _"No signs. Will keep eyes on the Zakera B1 spaceport."_

_"Good. I want updates by the hour. Spectre Bau to Agent Baat, you may proceed."_

"Agent Baat" was a term mentioned in the data package, along with access codes to Bau's comm channel. _How much has he dug up on me_ , Kaidan thought, noting the obvious reference.

"Everything all right?" Yin asked.

"Just checking the STG comm chatter. We're in the clear."

Yin stopped at the door to a warehouse and ran her fingers over the haptic console. Kaidan followed her into a darkened maze of stacked crates. Long ago a krogan had led him to a similar place.

"Now…" Yin said, turning around. The spare pistol rose. "Your turn to talk."

That krogan ended up a bullet-ridden corpse. Here violence wasn't an option. _Choose your words carefully._ "About why I broke you out."

"This whole thing was staged, wasn't it? Bau's desperate attempt to figure me out?"

Staged, but not desperate. Though Bau's data package contained only codes, not orders, its purpose was clear—even if the reasoning wasn't. Kaidan had a few small things in common with Yin, but he was no infiltrator. Or even a great liar. _Maybe it's_ because _I'm the unlikely spy._

"Well?" Yin asked.

The best lies had kernels of truth, the old adage said. "You're right. I was sent to spy on you, but hear me out."

She narrowed her eyes and advanced on him. "You have ten seconds."

"You lost a friend when the _Normandy_ went down, but I was there. I had to watch it happen. And then the Council… swept everything under the rug. Shepard sacrificed a lot of good men and women to save their lives. And look at how the Council repaid him."

Joker had made that point, shaking with an empty anger while clutching a half-empty beer. Kaidan remembered the SR-1 cap tossed in the trash, the dumpster that was Joker's apartment, the pain that he understood and the frustration he'd processed, and hoped that it clawed at the edges of his voice.

Maybe it clawed at Yin, too, when she lowered the gun. She glanced around the warehouse and nodded. Four armored and armed humans appeared from cloaks. Kaidan felt his shoulders tense.

"Good answer," Yin said. The others put away their rifles.

"I do want to know what you're doing. If it matters as much as you say it does, then I want to help, too."

"All right, then. Shuttle's this way. Stay close." As Yin flashed him a smile, conjured anger gave way to honest relief—if this worked out, the last bit of honesty he'd get to indulge in.

 

Several relay hops and an FTL jump brought a space station orbiting a green gas giant into view. No lights ran along its shadowed length, nor did any heat register on the transport's sensors. Stolen tech, Kaidan surmised. On the off-chance someone passed by, they would've dismissed the station as derelict.

"What is this place?"

"Caesar Station. Not the main base, if that's what you're thinking," Yin said from the copilot's chair. "Just one of many."

The transport slipped into a hangar at one of the station's ends. A soldier waited for them when they descended the boarding ramp. "You're late," he said.

Yin shrugged. "Brought a new recruit, one of Shepard's old squad. Is the boss taking visitors?"

"Not at the moment. You know how she is."

"Oh, well. There'll be enough time for introductions." She glanced at Kaidan. "Follow me."

Flickering lights cast Caesar's clean lines and undecorated metalwork in a certain half-shadow. Soldiers in black roamed the catwalks above, visible for a split-second, obscured the next. Kaidan looked out for logos, decals—something about who this station belonged to both then and now—but found nothing. At least Cerberus identified themselves, that fanged shape in the Nepheron base's office.

_Too new for formalities,_ he hoped.

"Sorry about the sad state of the place," Yin said. "We have to be ready to evacuate on a moment's notice. You understand, right?"

_No defenses, then._ "I do. So, does this operation have a name?"

"Yeah, actually." Yin looked over her shoulder. "Whitwell will tell you when you meet her."


	8. Victor Shepard - Backwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission to Aite introduces Shepard to the Illusive Man’s left hand.

Again the pixellated face smeared itself on several nearby monitors and screamed its nonsense, booming again through the facility's mess hall, over dead researchers and dead geth. Another cry, and the words—and the terror behind them—came through the distortion. _"Quiet please, make it stop."_

Shepard frowned, then looked behind him at a flight of stairs. "What was Project Overlord's purpose? AI technology? Anti-geth weaponry?"

"I'm not sure," Miranda said, climbing the last step. "The Illusive Man gave me the same briefing as you. Both your ideas seem likely."

"Maybe the other operative he sent knows something."

Miranda gave a faint scowl. "Perhaps."

_"Miranda will accompany you to Aite,"_ the Illusive Man had said. The two of them were to rendezvous with another Cerberus agent already on the ground. _"He tends to be somewhat abrasive, but he has a great deal in common with you."_ This wasn't the first Cerberus mess the Illusive Man asked him to clean up, but it _was_ the first he took such a hands-on approach. What made Overlord so important, Shepard wondered.

Down a corridor and through a door, shredded and unmoving geth littered the next room. Save one, sparking and spasming while a kneeling man worked an omni-tool over its head. Shepard's approach drew the man's cold gaze. A blade sprung from his omni-tool, and he severed the cords behind the geth's neck. The geth twitched, then joined the rest in silence.

"You're the Illusive Man's agent?" Shepard asked, noting the orange fanged symbol on the man's black armor.

"His personal assassin," Miranda said. "This is Kai Leng."

"And you…" Leng's deep voice carried just over a whisper as he gestured towards Shepard. The cybernetic plating framing his dark eyes shifted with his smile. "… Must the boss's pet science project. I'd shake hands, but we have a mission."

_Can see why Miranda doesn't like him._ He could also see how Miranda lied about her briefing. "How much do you know about this project?"

"Before he dropped out of contact, the chief scientist told me that we're dealing with a rogue VI."

"And the geth?"

"It's controlling them somehow. The one I scanned had signs of tampering."

"I thought the geth were immune to long-term hacking."

Leng shrugged, then turned towards a staircase. "We'll just have to find out."

The favored operative, the elite problem solver, that and more came through in the smooth grace of Leng's movements. A Shepard fresh out of N-school had that easy, naive cockiness, too. _"He tends to be somewhat abrasive, but he has a great deal in common with you."_ That seemed more bad than good with each passing second.

"So," Shepard said, following Leng, "let me guess. Ex-Alliance?"

A chuckle came ahead of him. "Was it that hard to figure out? Yes. Former marine. Even paid the Villa a visit. Walked out with the logo and the stripe."

_N7._ That explained one of Shepard's hunches. "But you left."

"I'm not in your suicide zoo. Save the prying for them."

"And why aren't you, anyways?"

Miranda came up to Shepard's side. "Our mission is taking up a considerable amount of the Illusive Man's resources. He wants to keep a few in reserve."

Yet the Illusive Man sent Leng here, his own ex-N7, to work with Shepard. Alongside Miranda, two of Cerberus's most loyal agents were assigned to someone who couldn't say the same. _One Cerberus plot, and I'm in the dark. My entire mission exactly._

Monitors lit up with green pixels, and the intercom loosed the tormented cry once more. _"Quiet please, make it stop."_ Shepard glanced at Leng, then Miranda, before continuing on.

 

Three research stations overrun with hacked mechs and kilometers of travel brought the three of them to the VI's controls. Just a console awaited them. Not even a special interface. Shepard glanced at Miranda and Leng, then placed his fingers on the haptic keys.

His omni-tool appeared, not of his own doing. The room, the air, everything _pulsed._ Green fire—no, pixels—erupted from the console and his omni-tool. Shepard tried lifting his hand, but something, some dull force, some presence, seized every muscle.

_"Quiet please."_ The voice came from no speakers or intercoms, but from his own head, like a thought that drowned out every other with its echoing pain. _"Make it stop."_

The VI was all Shepard could muster before his arm obeyed some impulse. His legs followed suit, turning him around and shuffling forward, one after the other. Miranda's mouth moved, as did Leng's. Nothing came out that he could hear. His mouth did nothing that he could respond with.

The door shut behind him once he was out of the room. Then the vice grip lifted, and the floor rushed to meet him.

He caught himself on his elbows and pushed up onto his hands. Glowing green lines ran along the floor, along the walls and ceiling, pointing towards a door at the end of the hallway.

_No other way._ Shepard followed.

In the next room, a curving corridor with a view of a large central chamber, the green lines stopped and a orange pixellated haze began. Holographic phantoms, all wearing Cerberus uniforms, walked up and down. Some seemed locked in conversation, others alone. Shepard unclipped his pistol and proceeded.

He'd seen some of these faces before, on the decaying corpses around the research stations. Was the VI showing him the past?

He had his answer when Doctor Archer's image moved past him. "The square root to nine-hundred-six-point-oh-one." Archer said, the voice again in Shepard's mind.

"Equals thirty-point-one." A bald young man appeared at Archer's side.

For a moment, Archer was in the corner of Shepard's eye, not ahead of him, before both the doctor and the young man fizzled out. Shepard frowned. _His memories._

More doors led to more rooms and more memories: David interacting with a geth unit, Archer conferring with the Illusive Man, Archer's desperate journal entries. The VI's memories led him to a conference room. Doctor Archer appeared once more before a QEC device.

"Initial link-ups were successful, but subsequent attempts placed increasing strain on David's mind." Archer tapped a foot as he looked downward. "I fear he's no longer willing to continue the project."

"Project Overlord is important to my long-term goals," the Illusive Man's voice said, "You haven't forgotten the stakes, have you?"

"I haven't."

"Good to hear. I trust you'll do what's needed."

"What's needed" echoed, blared in Shepard's head, taking on a hundred different distortions with every repetition. A barrage of other words followed. For flickers of moments, cold metal seemed to lock around his wrists and angles as Doctor Archer's unfeeling stare bore down upon him.

_"We're ready. Open a connection to the geth network."_

_"David, no! Tell the geth to stand down."_

_"Quiet please, make it stop."_

And then it lifted. The lines and the haze remained, but Shepard was alone in the dead silence of the conference room. Archer told him that David volunteered for Project Overlord. Another lie. _Is why they're here?_ Did Miranda and Leng know the truth the whole time? Did the Illusive Man send Leng so one ex-N7 could keep another in check? Of course he would, after Binthu and Chasca and all the others.

Grateful for the locked door, Shepard continued on. He spotted an elevator down and made for it.

A sharp force—a real one—to his head sent him reeling forward. Shepard caught himself, turned around and pointed his pistol.

Too slow. This time it struck him sideways. The gun clattered on the floor while his back hit a wall.

"Whatever you think you're doing," Kai Leng said, omni-blade pressed against Shepard's chest, "the answer is 'no.'"

Shepard kicked out, broke free as Leng staggered. Three punches. Leng weaved around them, but a fourth caught him across the chin.

"So what's _your_ mission?" Shepard asked, backing off. "Keep me from doing something your boss might disagree with?"

Leng grinned. "Well, the Illusive Man didn't pick an idiot to fight the Collectors."

Shepard sidestepped a kick, dodged a swipe, replied with testing blows that created a fair distance. _He's not here to kill me, just incapacitate me._ "Cerberus doesn't want David Archer freed. They need their perfect test subject for Overlord. Not happening."

"That's just the thing," Leng said. "You and your overinflated sense of importance. On your fancy ship _,_ our boss lets you think you're in charge. He tells his people to follow your orders while he moves you square by square like a pawn. Here? You're just a gun pointed at a problem." Leng aimed his omni-tool. "Here, Cerberus doesn't require you to _think._ "

Shepard rolled away from the incinerating attack. Glass shattered behind him. "We're done here."

"Our boss—"

Shepard pounced. His forked omni-blade bit into Leng's side. "Will have to deal with it."

A blow to the face. Shepard stumbled. Leng, scowling and clutching the stab wound, lobbed a grenade out the broken window. The central chamber came alight with green and the sounds of systems firing up. And the VI _roared._

David and Doctor Archer's ghosts. Flashes of dead researchers. _"The square root to nine-hundred-six-point-oh-one equals thirty-point-one." "No longer willing to continue." "Do what's needed." "Tell the geth to stand down!"_

_"Quiet please, make it stop."_

Amidst the hellish clamor inside Shepard's head, two hands grabbed his shoulders. A knee slammed into his gut. His swimming vision shifted. Cold metal struck his face.

"Call it cheap," Leng said, his blurry figure standing over him. "A shot is a shot. Shame. Would've liked to take you on at your best. But we make do, right?"

Footsteps, then the sliding metal of a closing door.

A near-eternity seemed to pass before the door Shepard _could_ see opened.

"Commander." Miranda rushed towards him and knelt, omni-tool opened. "Dammit. Can you walk, Shepard?"

Despite what felt like heavy weights on his arms, Shepard pushed himself up to sit. Miranda helped him lean back against a wall. "Yeah. Don't know how good…" Miranda's face went out of focus, and Shepard head refused to keep level. He grunted. "Stop him" was what could manage. If she listened, the only thing he needed to.

_If._ Miranda stood and stared down at him for a long few seconds. "I'm sorry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to take a brief holiday hiatus from updating, but Blindside is back!


	9. Jeff Moreau - One of a Few

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Aite, Joker finds a whimper, not a bang, at the breaking point.

Joker saw this chain unfold before, the ominous news heralding Shepard's less-than-triumphant return to the ship. The _Normandy_ was locked down, the SR-1's VI said. But where that time came as a surprise, the Aite mystery mission got Joker's gut twisted the whole time.

Confidential mission details were one thing--when they were for the Alliance. Cerberus? Another thing entirely. But then came a hack attempt that even EDI barely held off. And the puncher: when comms reconnected to the ground team, Miranda, not Shepard, made the call.

_"Moreau, send the shuttle in on my coordinates. I need Doctor Chakwas ready for two patients."_

The last time, Shepard stepped through the SR-1's airlock with angry purpose in his step and pure ice in his voice. This time, he went straight to the med bay. The crew's mutterings--"I heard he isn't in good shape," "stay away from Lawson"--left Joker hanging on Chakwas's every work from Aite's orbit to the fuel depot.

So, hours later, Joker let out the longest breath when the med bay door opened and Chakwas ushered him inside.

"The VI hybrid's attack was centered on your omni-tool." Miranda stood between Shepard's bed and the next. "From there, it was able to access your cerebral implants."

Shepard, bruised and bandaged, focused his gaze on the ceiling. "Damage?"

"You suffered only minor injuries, fortunately," Chakwas said, looking at a datapad. "This VI attack seemed to sharpen them. Still, I'd suggest staying aboard the _Normandy_ for the time being. Imagined or not, this mission did a number on you."

"Understood." Shepard sighed. "What about David Archer?"

Miranda stepped aside and gestured behind her. A pale, bald kid, hooked up to serious equipment, slept on a far bed. "He's here?"

That got her Shepard's attention.

"I shut down the VI, disabled Kai Leng, and had David brought aboard. Doctor Archer had his objections. I ignored them."

"I... didn't expect that."

"I was following orders."

"So was Leng. I figured the Illusive Man sent you and Leng for a specific reason, but I want to hear the truth from you."

"You figured correctly. We were supposed to ensure that David remained a subject for Project Overlord, either by convincing you or denying you a say. Both non-violently, I should add." A bitter smile crept across Miranda's face. "It seems both of us were insubordinate."

_What the hell happened down there,_ Joker thought. The conversation suggested an even more unusual mission than he suspected.

"Why?" Shepard asked.

Miranda pursed her lips. Seconds passed before she said, "Leng? Only he knows. _I_ prioritized our overall needs."

_Vague and corporate._

"Now," Miranda said, "with your leave, I'll report to the Illusive Man. He should be _thrilled_ with the results of this mission."

Shepard nodded once.

When the door hissed closed behind her, Joker stepped forward. "Hey, you all right?"

Shepard's expression softened. "Took a few bad hits from the Illusive Man's pet assassin, but I'll be fine. The mission was successful—never mind what Cerberus thinks."

"Cerberus won't have a choice but to accept the results," Chakwas said. "We're too valuable to them."

"Yeah." Shepard looked down. "Though I get the feeling this won't be the last time we disagree."

"Whatever happens, this is your crew. Not the Illusive Man's."

Joker glanced at Chakwas, then Shepard. "What she said."

"Though on the topic of disagreements..." Chakwas went to check on David Archer. "We'll need to get him somewhere safe. I suggest Grissom Academy. He'll be among peers there, and I can pull a few favors to streamline the acceptance process."

"Joker?"

"I'll set course after we're resupplied."

Shepard nodded. "Good."

"And as for you, Commander," Chakwas said, "I think I can clear you to resume your duties. I'd appreciate extra scans of your implants, to be on the safe side."

"Done."

Shepard slid off the bed with more caution than Joker expected. He looked at Chakwas and Joker, said "As you were," then left.

Chakwas had her gaze on the closing door. She broke the seconds' silence as she returned to her desk. "You realize he was lying?"

"Huh?"

"I've served with enough officers. I know when they say things just to maintain morale. I was hoping he'd be less guarded with us."

The last time, Shepard used that level-headed and measured voice that COs used after things went south. But the hint of exhaustion came a little stronger here.

Joker took a step towards the exit. "I'll talk to him when I get the chance."

 

He'd done this before, staring at the captain's cabin door and wondering if it was wise to buzz. The last time, however, Shepard was still with the Alliance. He hadn't died, he hadn't been roped into working with terrorists. _"There's no way they spend this much money just to screw us over"_ was another lie.

Joker flexed his fingers. Last time he brought a bottle of booze, too.

The door control panel hovered right in front of his face. Better him than EDI announcing his presence, he supposed. With a deep breath he reached forward and hit a button. "Hey, Commander. You…"

He hadn't thought that sentence through, but Shepard mercifully opened the door before he needed to finish it. Shepard himself sat at his desk, fingers darting over haptic keys. Half a dozen datapads were stacked up next to the computer. _Ever the workaholic,_ Joker thought.

"You all right?" Joker asked.

Lines of text grew left to right on the computer screen. "Do you want the on-record or off-record answer?"

"Think you know the answer to that."

With a slow shove Shepard pushed himself away from his desk. "I'm not really a Commander anymore. I'm a Spectre in name only at best. And Cerberus keeps telling me that they can help me stop the Reapers. That they're the only ones who can. You'd think the Illusive Man would avoid obvious manipulation, but here I am, on his ship, leading his people, doing his dirty work. It's working. I can feel the damn strings, but it's  _working_.

"Project Overlord was supposed to create some human-VI hybrid that could command the geth. David Archer was the unwilling human half, probably the reason the whole thing went berserk. So Cerberus needed me to clean up their mess, but not solve it. They just wanted my gun in it, not my head."

Shepard stood up and approached the set of steps down. "But… that's not the whole problem. Kai Leng and Miranda were supposed to convince me that David needed to stay with the project. The Illusive Man thought I could be persuaded like that." Back turned, Shepard glanced over his shoulder. "What if he's right?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"No. No way. Why would you even think that?"

"Two years ago, I wouldn't have considered it. Nothing they said would've convinced me."

"And it'd be the same thing now. Hell, even Cerberus wanted you back the way you were."

"Just listen to me. I was losing air from suit breaches." Shepard's voice turned to half-hurried mutterings as he placed his hand above the light switch. "My suit was being opened up to space while I was falling into a planet's atmosphere, and my body ended up a charred hunk of meat. That was it. The end. Dead." He raised his head. "A body is one thing. Bones, muscles, skin, those can be rebuilt, I get that. That's not the problem. What I don't believe is that Cerberus can put a _person_ back together."

_Shinier, stronger, but still just a copy._

"I _died,_ Joker."

_There it is._ Joker wanted to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. And what could he say? That Shepard would find a way out of the mess that Joker's own stupidity had landed him in?

"I keep checking everything. 'Would I have done this two years ago?' 'Would I have said this?' "Would I have thought this?' I guess there's my answer."

Shepard's hand slid downward on the wall. If Joker was stupid or bold or both he would've put his on it. If he was better at people he would've said something helpful. _Just yell at me, dammit. Tell me that it's my fault you're stuck here. Don't just stand there and crumble._

_Let me know I can stop pining like an idiot_ , too, but a stupid crush was the least important thing here.

Shepard turned around at last. "How did you deal with just being a shuttle pilot?"

"You're asking about _that_?"

"I know I might be grasping at straws, but just… just play along."

_And you're asking_ me _for advice. Great._ "Dunno. I was frustrated. Thought the brass was just shoving me aside. For a while I thought I'd be stuck there forever."

"What changed?"

Joker shrugged. "Decided I'd get myself out. Saw an opportunity."

Shepard averted his gaze, then nodded at him. Somehow he saw something in Joker's not-so-shining moment involving biotiball cards and alcohol. "Thanks," he said. Some semblance of the commander had returned to his expression. "And… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dropped all that on you."

"Friends let each other vent." _Even if they can't do shit about it._ "'Sides, you… probably needed to get that off your chest."

"Yeah."

So Shepard returned to his desk. "By the way," he said, opening his computer, "I got a message from Admiral Hackett. He wants me to go to Alchera, put a monument at the SR-1's wreckage. Do you want to come along?"

"This an offer to all the old crew? Chakwas, Garrus, Tali?"

"I was planning on keeping it just us, but if you want them along, we can do that, too."

Five would make for much less awkwardness than two, given the location. But on the other hand, given the location… "Wait, what about you? You're okay with this?" He tried imagining it, the bits and pieces of his beautiful ship scattered about a frozen wasteland. If that image sent him a chill, how much more for Shepard?

"I'm not sure, but I don't think there will ever be a good time for it."

"Yeah. Guess not." Dulled silver, charred at the edges, the darkened shell of the old cockpit… Where their friendship began and ended, Joker used to think, before the Lazarus Project. He shook those notions and pictures from his mind and looked back at Shepard. "Just us is fine, by the way."


	10. Miranda Lawson - Defined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two times when Miranda acted and dealt with the consequences.

"Now, with your leave, I'll report to the Illusive Man. He should be _thrilled_ with the results of our mission."

With Shepard's short nod, Miranda took one more glance around the medbay—the Commander's tired surprise, Moreau's confusion, Chakwas's calm composure, and David Archer's peaceful sleep—and left.

_Unbelievable_. Kai Leng owed everything to the Illusive Man, but when it came to Shepard he seemed all too eager to disregard his orders. Shepard inspired something. Jealousy, perhaps—given the snide remarks and the superiority complex, Leng seemed the petty type.

But what about her insubordination, Miranda wondered as she stepped into the elevator, and again as the conference room's QEC field rose around her.

There were no sips of a drink or puffs of a cigarette. Between the two of them the Illusive Man had long moved past theatrics. "Miranda. I understand you had an unfortunate situation concerning Overlord. I had a feeling Leng might pounce on any sign of weakness from Shepard, but that's why I had you there. You were supposed to keep him in check."

"You read Leng's report," Miranda said. "You have the specifics of what happened."

"Yes. Leng was able to neutralize you long enough to deal the damage he did. But that should've been the end of it. We would've had an acceptable outcome if you remained out of the picture until Leng secured David Archer. Instead, you ruined the entire project. I expected this from Jacob, not from you."

Miranda Lawson folded her arms. "I was following orders. _Your_ orders. I remember you specifically stating that Shepard was in charge on this mission."

"I don't need to discuss the command dynamic on the SR-2," he said, tapping his cigarette against the tip of an armrest. "Nor do I need to remind you that this is a Cerberus mission."

"If this mission is to succeed, we need Shepard to be able to trust his crew. I wouldn't still be his XO if I didn't stop Leng."

_"Stop him,"_ Shepard had choked out. So she followed Leng, feigned complicity. Dozens upon dozens of pistol slugs were needed to break through the VI hybrid's defenses. Only one omni-tool shock was needed to leave Leng an unconscious heap on the floor.

_"Moreau,"_ she said over comms, _"send the shuttle in on my coordinates. I need Chakwas ready for two patients."_

"So I can trust that your insubordination wasn't out of some sudden moral urge," the Illusive Man said.

"I heard enough about Overlord's merits from Doctor Archer."

 

Miranda, sixteen years old, kept her posture rigid and her face blank under her father's stare. "I heard enough from Mitsuda."

Henry Lawson's scowl deepened. "Mitsuda has been the manager of the Sydney offices for almost eight years. One day, he might answer to you, but until then you'd do well to listen to him. You don't learn to run a company by staring down from the top. You start from the bottom."

"He can't decide if I'm a child or I'm his boss."

"That's good. You command respect, and once you're older the former won't be an issue."

Miranda's fist tightened, hidden in her chair. _I command respect because of you._

"The point remains, however," her father said. "Lawson Pharmaceuticals has a reputation for treating its employees like family. Tomorrow you'll return to the Sydney offices, you'll observe how Mitsuda runs the place, and you'll listen to his every word. When you return on Friday, you'll report everything to me. Understood?"

Off to the side, a new window appeared over her father's desk. "Understood."

"Dismissed, then."

The walk back to her room was a short one. She changed out of her business attire, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed. Funny, Miranda noted, gazing at the closet, then the dresser, then the desk. Her bedroom had been the closest thing to a sanctuary in the Lawson mansion, yet she never gave its details so much as a second thought. Did her father? When she was a mere thought, did he ever look at the room and wonder what kind of child he'd have? Did it excite him, not just for the dynasty, but for the daughter?

Miranda pulled the sheets over herself. Useless questions, all of them. What mattered was the satisfaction in letting Henry Lawson think he'd won. Because the next day, she left no note—not on the neatly made bed and not on the still-organized desk. Unnecessary theatrics only complicated a simple but elegant plan.

By the late afternoon she was watching Sydney's skyscrapers and Sol's sunbeams pass by from the passenger seat of Niket's car. Skycars formed speckled squares above, but she appreciated the bumps and shakes of tires on the road.

"I owe you for this," Miranda said.

"Relax."

"My father's people must be looking for me right now—along with the police, I imagine. Relaxing is a bit difficult right now."

"You're sure you don't stay at my place for the night? My family wouldn't have a problem with it."

"They wouldn't have a problem with the runaway daughter of a powerful CEO?"

"They won't have a problem with my best friend."

That brought a faint smile to her lips. The idea didn't seem too terrible, an actual family living in an actual home, smiles and welcomes and all. Not just watching, too—she'd be at the dining table or on the couch. _"The food is delicious."_ _"How was your day?"_ Utterly trivial talk, under a different light, took on more meaning than any number of back-and-forths with Henry Lawson.

"They won't be thinking that when there's knocking on the door. At best that would just put me back at square one."

"And at worst?"

She cut that fantasy off just at the darker turn. "People getting hurt."

"So where _are_ you going?"

_One of my father's contacts. Her people will protect me if I join their organization._ The "one" was on the tip of her tongue for a split-second. "I can't tell you. I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make me feel any better just leaving you."

"Trust me."

"I…" Niket sighed. "Yeah. Okay. King and York, right?"

The last several minutes drained by, bringing them to the center of Old Downtown Sydney. Shoppers and diners and tourists roamed about—potential eyes for her father, wittingly or no, but "hiding in plain sight" seemed a strong suggestion. _Mind games within mind games._ When the car pulled over, she glanced back at Niket and pulled a hood on. "So this is it."

A young girl pulled at her father's arm as she pointed at a colorful storefront. Miranda opened the door and stepped out.

"You'll keep in touch?" Niket asked.

Miranda couldn't help but nod. "Promise. And… thank you."

"Any time."

She closed the door and turned around, not watching Niket drive away. _I shouldn't have involved him at all._ Even a simple ride posed unnecessary risks, and Niket and his family would be the first place her father looked regardless. If Niket knew nothing… _Too late for that now._ Perhaps Miranda had to trust _him_ , too.

Down the street and through a large door, the hotel lobby sprawled out like a long, lazy cat. Tourists and business people sat on an excessive number of velvet-covered sofas, staring at omni-tools or holographic advertisements, sipping on cocktails from the bar. Hiding in plain sight: Henry Lawson, and his shadow, would've deemed it all very gaudy.

Miranda took off her hood and approached the front desk. "I'm looking for Miss Rolleston."

The receptionist gave her an odd stare, then tapped a few haptic keys. A call and a "Yes, Miss Rolleston" later, he looked back at Miranda and gestured to the door behind him. "Elevator at the end of the hallway. Second basement level, then third door on your right. Welcome to The Grace, Miss Leitner."

"Thank you."

She followed the directions to a small office that matched the lobby in its ostentatiousness. The elegant woman behind the desk offered her a polite business smile. "You're here earlier than expected."

Miranda shut the door. "I like being efficient."

"Much like your father." Miss Rolleston poured a glass of water, then gestured to the seat across from her. "Were you followed?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Good. As you can imagine, your father has the police and his household out and about looking for you. Thankfully, there's a great deal of ground to cover between his mansion and Sydney, and my people were able to misdirect him. Most of the Sydney police are conducting a half-hearted search in Sutherland Shire. Mister Lawson believes you're actually in Melbourne."

"You went through all that effort?"

"My boss has a keen interest in recruiting you. He believes you'll make a fine addition to the organization, so much that he's willing to lose Lawson Pharmaceuticals in exchange."

"He told you that?"

"Indirectly. I've never actually spoken to him, but word comes down the chain of command." Rolleston opened up a haptic window. "Now. Tomorrow I'll have one of my people take you to the spaceport. You'll be boarding a Cord-Hislop corporate shuttle that will take you to the Citadel. There, you'll meet Infante, and he'll arrange for proper introductions. You've never left Earth, have you?"

Her father's business trips took her all over the planet, but not off it. "No."

Rolleston smiled. "Fitting that Cerberus shows you the rest of the galaxy, then."

 

The Illusive Man laced his fingers together. "It's not wise making Kai Leng's hit list, but I can restrain him." _For now_ went unsaid, or perhaps _as long as you remain in line._ "Your mission is too important for little rivalries to get in the way. But let me make myself clear, Lawson. I don't want this happening again."

Posture rigid and face blank, Miranda nodded. "Noted."

"I'll remember that choice of words."

The Illusive Man cut the connection, and the QEC field retreated into the conference room floor. Miranda turned and stepped through the door.

Jacob leaned on a bulkhead, arms crossed. "How'd it go?"

_Always sticking your nose somewhere,_ Miranda thought. "When it comes to our boss, I can handle myself."

"Figured that. I don't get how you stand toe-to-toe with him, but…" Jacob shrugged and headed for the armory. "Guess it's just one of the things you do."

"You can say that," Miranda said, following.

Other operatives, after learning about her past, tried making the old "trading father figures" comparison. She wasted no time shooting that down. Her younger self made a business deal with the Illusive Man. She had very little use for father figures, and Henry Lawson was to thank for that—sincerely.

Jacob leaned back on a workbench. "I gotta say, though. You did the right thing on Aite."

Miranda pursed her lips, then looked up. "EDI, Operator override. Disable audio recording in the armory."

"Override acknowledged, Operator Lawson."

Pacing around, she returned her attention to Jacob. "Sometimes I wonder."

The experiments on husks, rachni, and Thorian creepers were intended to produce shock troops, she told Shepard. He didn't take well to the notion of "necessary sacrifices." But when she saw David Archer crucified to a massive apparatus, withered from malnutrition and crying for help… Miranda remembered a wailing baby in a cradle as she snuck in through the bedroom window. That, more than Shepard's orders or even her own pragmatism, decided her choice.

"No question about it. I was surprised when I heard what you did, but I'm glad that crazy experiment's shut down."

Joining Cerberus was a business transaction, but she spent almost half her life building upon it. Now a "moral impulse" tore at its foundations. Miranda looked at Jacob and said, "I appreciate the vote of confidence."


	11. Liara T'Soni - Expectations Defied

From across a plain white desk in a near-empty office, Liara T'Soni came to appreciate the virtues of sparse decorating. Less ammunition in biotic duels, for one. "But the data's usable?" she asked.

"Once it's decrypted, yes." Sekat's gaze flicked back and forth between his computer and Liara, while his fingers, like a machine, drummed on the desk when not on a keyboard. "I must admit, I'm curious. What is this data for, exactly?"

"Something important. I can't explain the specifics. Only that I'll owe you a favor after this is done."

Sekat scratched one of his salarian horns. "Hm. Guess it's futile to simply _ask_ an information broker for her secrets. But a favor? I'll take that."

Her head turned towards the door. How robust were Baria Frontiers' security measures, she wondered. Hansen worked for the most well-regarded bank on Illium, yet the Shadow Broker's people still killed her in her office. Liara didn't even know where Karthan lived when the news reported that his body was found in the sewers. The Observer's life for a dozen of her contacts'—the Shadow Broker favored uneven trades.

"Prototype decryption software," Liara said. "Straight from the Serrice Council. It's yours." _One of the last favors I have left to give._

"Now we're talking. I'll get started right—"

Rumbling, shaking, and distant roars. The single white light shut off, leaving red emergency dots along the floor.

Her reaction was immediate. "Back-up everything. The data, decryption software. Everything. On your omni-tool."

Sekat blinked, then put his fingers to the interface. Nervousness rattled otherwise mechanical strokes. The longest minute passed before…

Before the hum of a drive core came behind them. Liara stood and spun around as the skycar smashed in through the large window. Armored troops burst out. Rifles pointed.

She shouted at Sekat once more, throwing up a large barrier to catch the barrage. Beyond the rippling violet, half a dozen faceless visors stared at her, gray hardsuits unmarked. She should've moved more quietly after the attempt at her apartment. But against the Shadow Broker, was there even a "quiet enough?"

"It's done!" Sekat said.

"Get the door."

Summoning her strength, she twisted her barrier and hurled it forward. The shockwave flung a few troopers out the window and tossed others to the floor. Those she graced with quick pistol shots before rushing out of the office.

Claws of flame tore through a once immaculate array of cubicles. Sekat stood in the middle of an aisle, staring at a trooper gunning his coworkers down. A single shot signaled another execution. Then the rifle turned on Sekat.

Liara tackled him into cover. Rapid fire surged overhead. "What's the best escape route?"

Sekat's lips trembled as he sat motionless beside her.

Barrier blazing, Liara stood and slammed the trooper against a wall with a biotic wave. _He doesn't have to fight, but I can at least get him to move._ "It's clear," she said, offering Sekat her hand. "But it won't stay that way forever. We need to get going."

Sekat stared at her hand before taking it. "The... emergency exit is this way."

He led her through the maze of debris, smoke, and fire to a door and a long staircase beyond. Gunfire and explosions still rumbled through the walls, but none of the Shadow Broker's soldiers awaited them.

"Who are these people?" Sekat asked, descending the first flight.

No use for secrets now. He's too involved. "They're the private army of the Shadow Broker. They came for me."

"The... the Shadow Broker? And you brought them here?"

"I did. I'm sorry."

"All my coworkers... my friends. They're..." Sekat threw a venomous glare at her. "What is this data?"

"I've been hunting the Shadow Broker for two years. That data is the last thing I need to finally locate him."

Sekat sighed. "I can't believe this. And since I'm decrypting it, they want me, too. They'll kill me, or worse."

"Nothing will happen to you. I'll make sure of it." Liara gave a careful look at every door they passed, pistol ready. "Send everything to me."

"Will that even help?" Sekat asked, opening his omni-tool.

"It may not."

She started a mental list of next steps when a flash of fire and an ear-piercing roar tore through the wall. The steps beneath her gave way to empty air. Instinct guided her hands into a mnemonic. The biotic field reduced the fall down to a drift.

Sekat reached for her. Too late. The crashing and screeching of debris downed out his scream.

As she landed, a limp hand poked out from a pile of scorched metal. _No time to mourn._ She'd do it by surviving. By escaping. By decrypting the data, by destroying the Shadow Broker. For Feron, and now for Sekat.

She forced the ground floor door open. A lone Broker troop awaited her, rifle pointed. But the shot tore through his helmet and sent him toppling to the floor.

"Come with me," a voice said.

Across the lobby, an asari lowered her pistol and waved to her. A Broker squad lay dead around her. Frowning, Liara followed her outside.

Smoke billowed from the Dracon Trade Center's upper floors while civilians either fled or stared slack-jawed, but the asari maintained perfect composure. Gold decals marked her sleek blue armor. _More than just a soldier._ "Who are you?" Liara asked. Not because she wanted to know, but because the asari expected it of her.

"Tela Vasir. Special Tactics and Recon."

Just past Vasir, the wreck that was Liara's skycar smoldered amongst the ruined lot. "What brought you here?"

"I was investigating the Shadow Broker. I guess my search brought me to the trade center just in time."

A lie spoken to perfection. The old Liara would have fallen for it, and today she might have done so as well. But Liara nodded, put on a grateful, naive smile. _Reveal nothing._ "Fortunately for me. Why, if I might ask?"

"About the Shadow Broker? They took something from me. I want it back. I think we can help each other there."

"And what—"

"I hacked their comm channels. They were looking for you. The Shadow Broker only sends their army if someone poses a threat to their operations. Put two and two together…"

Vasir's purple eyes seemed to measure Liara like a predator did with prey. Liara gave them a docile nod. "We'll need to get off Illium first. The Shadow Broker's people must be everywhere, looking for me. I'll meet you at…" She moved for the lot, stopping when she passed by Vasir. "Goddess." Her voice took on her best impression of bitter surprise.

"We'll take my car." Vasir turned and headed to an unmarred corner of the lot.

Liara followed. "I wanted to stop by one of my safehouses. There's data I need to secure first." At Vasir's raised eyebrow, she added "On the Shadow Broker."

"Done." When Vasir opened her skycar and stepped inside, she asked, "Where is it?"

"Unlisted location." _Make yourself too valuable to kill outright._ "Maybe I should drive."

Vasir's lips pressed ever so slightly together. With a sharp wave of her hand across the controls, the haptic interface slid across to the passenger seat. Liara bowed her head, then stepped in.

"So," Vasir said, "how does an archaeologist end up fighting Saren, then making the Broker's hit list?"

Liara pulled the skycar up and away from the lot. As she entered a traffic lane, Illium's lit-up skyscrapers became a darkened blur against the night sky. "You must know who my mother was."

"Matriarch Benezia. Right, the traitor."

The part of her she buried to start her hunt grimaced at the descriptor. "Both sides sought me out for my connection to her. After Saren's defeat… it's a long story." That, at least, was no lie. "The Shadow Broker took something from me, too." _Something and someone._

Vasir chuckled. "We have more in common than I thought."

The rest of the drive passed in silence, punctuated with Vasir's occasional personal question. Liara answered in selective truths—whether or not her gambit succeeded, none of what she gave would matter when this charade was over. Eventually the lane arrived at the border of Nos Astra and Alarryne. She nudged the car out and down, into Illium's depths.

The skyscrapers' "ground" swept up around the skycar, submerging it in the part of Illium that embraced the planet's true nature. Signs of every color smeared a gaudy glow over metal on the edge of rust and decay—a slightly cleaner Omega. Liara hugged the upper end of the undercity for another few kilometers. One more plunge took the skycar into the unused alleyways at Illium's forgotten ground level.

"I imagine you don't come here often," Vasir said as the car landed and its doors opened to the dark.

"I don't. That's why it's the best place for this data." Once outside Liara stepped up to a wall and held her omni-tool against it. A single light turned on in response, and the panel slid aside to reveal a staircase down. Fortunately, the tiny room inside—and the computer—appeared untouched. Without a word she sat at her desk and got to work. "In case the Broker's people find this place, I'm wiping everything here. You and I will have copies."

"Sounds good."

She pulled two items out of her coat. Another minute pecking away at the keyboard, keeping a datapad in Vasir's sight, and Liara stood up. "Done."

"Hand me my copy and we can get out of here."

With casual steps Liara approached and gave her the datapad. Vasir's eyes narrowed as her gaze darted along the charts, schematics, and text.

"Well," Vasir said, not seeing Liara inch backwards. "I can see why the Broker wanted you—"

Alarm shot into her expression as she threw the datapad away. The attached grenade's explosion met a half-formed biotic barrier—Liara's one moment, one chance. Reaching out, she took hold of the barrier and _collapsed_ it. Not enough to crush her, but enough to hold her in place. The smoke cleared, leaving a battered-looking Vasir floating in the makeshift stasis field's grasp.

"No more playing around," Liara said. "I knew who you were the moment you showed yourself at the trade center. After you tried killing me at my apartment, I doubled back. I saw you searching through it."

A humiliated glare raged beneath Vasir's paper-thin calm. "I underestimated you."

"You did. You should've killed me at the trade center, but you wanted my data on the Shadow Broker. Not for them… for leverage. A Spectre should answer to no one but the Council." _We do have more in common than I thought._ "The Shadow Broker did take something from you."

Tela Vasir's lifetime spanned almost four of Liara's. Tela Vasir witnessed countless generations of other species come and go. And now those centuries lay in the palm of her hand. "Goddess have mercy." Liara signed one last gesture.

After the crack and the thud, Liara knelt by the body and began the datamine. _Did you expect this, Matriarch Irissa?_ She suffered detour after detour, one unforeseen adversary after another, but now Spectre-level intel and more poured into her omni-tool, joining Sekat's critical data.

Irissa couldn't possibly have expected this of her. Nor could anyone, really—not Benezia, not Shepard, not even Liara herself. The Shadow Broker lay just outside her reach, but now she saw those last few steps forward. Soon she could take them.


	12. Jeff Moreau - A Constant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alchera is a place of ends--and, maybe, beginnings.

_Nothing like the sight of your baby._

Joker said that a long time ago, when Captain Anderson stood at the center of the CIC and commissioned his shiny prototype ship into active duty. And he liked to think that he said it again much later, as the shiny prototype ship burned and broke. So, for the second or third time, but only in his head, Joker said it.

_Nothing like the sight of your baby's wreckage._

"Tell me again why we're here," he said. From the Kodiak's external camera feed, glimmering auroras cast their reflections on the panorama of icy cliffs and outcroppings. Anyone else might've called it pretty if they ignored the chunks of metal strewn all over the ice, exposed like massive bones, reaching for a distant sky they used to rule.

The shine had faded. The burning and breaking had long taken their toll.

"You wanted to come," Shepard said, sitting across from him.

"That's the worst part."

The shuttle touched the ground and Joker opened the door. A gust brushed against his simple environmental suit. "They could've shot us down over a nice planet. Like Chasca. Nice and sunny and warm…"

"I'd rather not deal with a swarm of husks."

Joker shrugged. "Yeah," he said, lowering his voice. "Guess there's enough dead things here already." His snow treads were on tight at the bottom of his greaves. So they set out, two of them amidst the ice and the _Normandy_ 's bones.

The snow crunched under his feet. "I'll stay inside," his seven-year-old self once told Mom. It was the second or third time they went to Earth for vacation, and the Montreal winter—and the carrot-nosed handiwork of his cousins—painted Uncle Nate's backyard an inviting, promising white. A broken promise led to a broken leg and an ER trip. Years passed before Mom let him anywhere near snow again.

Joker checked every step before setting a foot down. This trip would've ended in a repeat of that one without Cerberus's work. Cerberus made a lot of things possible: the one walking just ahead of him, looking left and right, for one.

Shepard was there at the commissioning ceremony, just by Anderson's right. Every salute sent his way had a certain crispness to it, like the crew was star-struck from getting to serve with the Hero of Elysium. Joker had to admit that even he looked at the man for the first time with just the slightest bit of awe. Shepard looked the heroic part: blue eyes, cropped cut, square jaw, hint of stubble.

The massive, blackened ribs clumped together the closer they drew to the mouth of a metal cave. Their helmet lights switched on, casting white circles over the remnants of consoles on the sides, on the curved inner hull, on the shattered central walkway. On a mass of rubble where the airlock once was.

Past the last pair of bulkheads, Joker pushed dangling wires out of the way. "Well," he said, staring. "Damn. Ignore the rest of this mess and it's like I never left."

His head, despite the helmet, felt naked without the cap. Not the black and white SR-2 one, but its purple predecessor. That one was even more lost than the wreck, thrown into a trash can at Arcturus the day the Alliance grounded him. "I promise I won't screw up big-time" went unsaid between every employee and every boss. A nightmare of a recon mission later, and well, the brass wasn't as forgiving as Mom was.

"Could I have saved her?" he asked.

 _That time, he didn't have to say "I could still save her." Another, "unidentified vessel" was all he needed to hear._ He found himself taking another step forward, as if he could sit down and the whole wreck would piece itself back together and announce its second life with a roar.

That time, that time he'd gone over hundreds of different ways in his head, he was _better._ "Could I?"

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

"'Does it matter?' A lotta things would be different if…" _Dammit, he doesn't need to hear this._ Joker sighed. "You're right."

He _was_. A dozen takes on the same fantasy never fixed anything, just damaged them more. That didn't stop his imagination from going down the same old road. Now the ruins of the _Normandy_ _'s_ bridge gave the scenes a backdrop: haptic flight instruments and controls against dead equipment, dots and lines of light against smashed panels.

"Take your time," Shepard said.

That was more of a mercy than the man knew. Joker backed away from his old pilot's seat. "Nah. There's more to see."

Even though the sections were farther apart than they used to be, clockwork or magnetism or habit brought the two of them from the cockpit to the CIC. That was where Shepard pointed the way to Feros, to Noveria, to Virmire, to Ilos, and all the other planets and all the bad guys to shoot. Other times, he and Joker passed it by on the way to the mess hall while sharing chit-chat, stories, mission talk, sometimes all three at once.

They did a whole lot of the same on the SR-2, sans crutches, but something about those days put the "good" in front of the "old." Maybe it was the novelty of "then." Maybe it was the crappiness of "now."

Shepard stood at the base of the galaxy map, hands on the twisted railing. _It's crappier for him._ Joker got to choose Cerberus.

"I remember when I first opened this up," Shepard said. "I knew we had a mission, I picked the destination, no hesitation. But it didn't feel right. Up until then the _Normandy_ was Anderson's ship."

"Those were damn big shoes." For the briefest flash. The weeks of chasing leads across the galaxy made Anderson's command a distant memory. Legendary as he was, they were _Shepard's_ crew.

"You know," Joker said. Eden Prime was a mess of tension aboard the ship and weirdness on the planet, but this memory put a smile on his face. "I asked him if he pulled you out of a vid once."

"Huh?"

"'How does someone with this much star power exist?' That kind of thing."

Shepard gave him a tiny chuckle as he started off. "Do you still think that way?"

Laughter was a start. Joker shrugged. "Everything you've done belongs in a vid. You? We're all better off with you in meatspace."

The Mako, the sleeper pods—they passed by all of it in silence. Thankfully, even miraculously, it wasn't the silence that swallowed the captain's cabin when Shepard gave him a glimpse of the hell in his head, the void that gripped Joker because he couldn't say or do anything about it.

Joker dropped the Mako in the middle of Ilos's wreckage. Months earlier, he watched from a distance as work crews prepared the girl for her big debut. _Normandy_ , said the big white letters. That piece of the hull now labeled the entire crash site.

An explosion in the cockpit killed Ensign Grenado, but before few were prouder to be aboard than her. Joker never saw what happened to Junior Helmsman Pakti, but before that he surprised Joker with his willingness to learn and the speed at which he picked up Joker's piloting tricks. And Shepard, he thought, looking away…

_"I am the best damn helmsman in the Alliance fleet." "I prefer gold, you know, for my medal?"_

The last preserved section of the _Normandy_ waited ahead, more exposed than the rest. "Cargo bay," Shepard said, voicing Joker's thought and ending the comfortable quiet.

_"I can do it." "Joker?" "I can do it."_

_Damn_. What memories were running through Shepard's head? That thought branched out into others, some more embarrassing than the rest. Better that than miserable. Joker had entertained enough misery.

"She deserved better."

Joker turned around towards Shepard. The crushed stubs used to be lockers full of weapons and armor. Shepard ran a hand across the last one, right up until the huge pile of debris and the workbench that used to stand there.

 _"I don't regret a thing."_ Those were Ashley's last words to Shepard, but Joker heard them all the same.

"She did damn good with what she got."

"Yeah. The best she could. She was in awe of me when we first met. Now here I am, trying to follow her example. To mixed success."

"You sound like you wanna toast to that."

"Didn't bring anything to drink." Joker could hear the faint smile in that.

So instead they placed the Alliance's monument there, a golden crescent curving around and up with the _Normandy_ at its tip. She deserved better, maybe a ceremony that wasn't a political show, but the statue was what they had.

"Not bad," Joker said.

Something, nothing physical, but a presence, brushed against his suit. He glanced at the dark red stripe of Shepard's armor, from his shoulder to his hand. _I care a whole damn lot._ Maybe it even bordered "way too damn much." But Shepard didn't know that. _"Could I have saved her?"_ Joker had asked in the cockpit, not _"Could I have saved you?"_

Joker wanted him to. He wanted to say so. In any other situation with any other subject that need would've crossed over into spoken words. But this moment was worth not ruining.

Shepard had enough to deal with. He didn't need Joker's goddamn survivor's guilt-he needed a _constant._

Then he found what he was looking for: something to say. "Hey. You know what?"

Shepard looked at him.

"If you're looking for proof that nothing's changed about you… I'd say this whole trip works. 'Sides, me, Garrus, Tali, Chakwas, we wouldn't be here if you weren't, well…" _Commander-y, lovable you_. "You get my point."

"I do. Thanks. I don't think I believe that a hundred percent, but… I'll try."

 _Baby steps,_ Joker thought.

A minute later, Shepard turned around. "We should get going."

Before Joker followed suit, he gave the statue one more look: a glowing marker of his baby's resting place, her likeness pointing toward the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who’s back, many months later. This particular chapter was a doozy to get right. But that’s done, and this fic at long last has resumed its march to the end. Weekly updates and all.


	13. Urdnot Wrex - Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrex gives answers to a critic and finds answers in a chain of impossibilities.

At Ashley Williams's urging, Wrex toasted a crap shot of ryncol to the krogan homeworld. Tuchanka was a distant memory, a barren planet of failures hundreds of years in the past. A fraction of a lifespan later, however, he stepped off a shuttle onto the Urdnot ancestral grounds, noting how an impossibility became real just then.

"You're a full member of Clan Urdnot now." Commander Shepard, looking very much alive and not corpse-like, stood by a tomka's entry hatch. "Get to know your people. Make friends."

Two years after that crap shot and two years after Ashley's warrior's death, the Tuchanka dirt below Wrex's feet felt like when he first arrived. Impossibilities bred these days.

"I wanna get to know Clan Urdnot's _enemies._ Uvenk's blood whet my appetite," Okeer's tankbred said.

Wrex took a single step forward and grabbed Grunt by the dirty pauldron. "You said Shepard's your battlemaster. Follow his orders."

"But—"

"Follow his orders, and follow your chief's. _You're staying._ "

Grunt looked at Shepard, then Wrex. His shoulders rose and fell with a grumbling sigh. "Fine."

_If Shepard's the parent,_ Wrex thought, _I'm the babysitter._

"We'll find another Blood Pack base," Garrus said, following Shepard and the salarian doctor into the tomka. "You'll get to shred that one to your hearts' content. Both of them. Sound good, Grunt?" Grunt's grumble, Garrus's chuckle. "Have fun, Wrex."

"Bah. Don't get any uglier while you're gone."

Garrus closed the hatch behind him, and the tomka lumbered into the tunnel before gaining speed.

_Hundreds. Maybe thousands_ , Wrex thought, as the rumbling of tires against old stone and steel faded with distance. He'd seen all those people die, and not once did anyone get back up and start walking. _Until now._ Shepard said it took two years for Cerberus to rebuild him, but two years were nothing. In the grand scheme of things, he could've hit the planet's surface, pieced himself together, and called his Alliance for an evac. Wrex would've paid to see that.

"Back to camp." Wrex started down the debris-littered path. "Don't let killing Uvenk inflate your ego."

"Uvenk was a battlemaster."

"He was a shriveled worm." Uvenk's scars were numerous and _old,_ yet the wounds that left them went deep into his head. Whining and barking, he paced back and forth before Wrex's seat like he deserved a spot at its side—or on it. _"Tradition, our ways, too far…"_ _A shriveled worm with the mouth of a mad varren._ It was surprising he didn't leave any spittle on the ground. Or piss.

"He wanted to replace me. But I would've crushed him, and he knew it." Wrex clenched his fist for effect. "He was still stupid enough to fight Shepard."

Down a hill of compacted ruins, the Urdnot camp stretched out like a animal breaking out of its cage. Meanwhile, somewhere in Tuchanka's orbit waited some new _Normandy_ _. For its back-from-the-dead captain._ The two notions gave Wrex even more pause, standing at the top of the slope.

Wrex glanced at Grunt. "Enjoy destroying Shepard's enemies while you can. You'll miss it when it's over."

"Then why make me stay here?"

" _Some_ traditions should be respected. Your rite of passage was only the beginning."

"What's next?"

"Introductions. The women want to get a closer look at you." He chuckled at Grunt's reaction. "Not like that. You impressed them when you took down the thresher maw, but they won't stare and gape at you like the men will."

"They sent me breeding requests."

"And you expect them to take you on blind? They have standards. You only met one of them."

Gatatog warriors, once the rear of Uvenk's guard, tensed as they entered the camp. They turned and stared, but their hands made no move for their weapons—a cautious, not aggressive alert. Clan Gatatog only barked because their chief demanded it. Now that Uvenk lay dead in the dirt, his clan's place in Urdnot's alliance was for them to choose.

Wrex wouldn't admit it to Grunt, but the kid and his krannt did him a favor.

Nothing divided the women's camp from the rest of the compound save for a ruined doorway, a long stump of a wall, and a handful of guards. "The thresher maw killer," Wrex told one of them, gesturing at Grunt.

An outsider might have looked at the Urdnot women, saw less armor and weapons than the men had, and thought it the clan's weak point. A really stupid outsider might've taken a shiv to the throat or a shotgun blast to the gut. Wrex glanced at Grunt sweeping his gaze around the place and hoped he belonged to neither category.

Heads turned when two new pairs of footsteps announced their arrival. From the largest circle of women emerged an armored one, small-crested and lightly scarred. As her gaze moved from Wrex to Grunt, however, that all-seeing look that entered her eyes hinted at a different kind of age.

"Wrex," she said, slow and deliberate, "I thought you'd be entertaining Commander Shepard for longer."

"He didn't come here just for a reunion. This is Urdnot Grunt, Okeer's tankbred." To Grunt he said, "Urdnot Setrokan, leader of the female clan."

"Formerly of Clan Jaiakur," Setrokan said. "Like you, I chose to follow Wrex."

"Tell me about the thresher maw," a woman called out.

Wrex nodded at Grunt, and the kid stepped forward. Many women had returned to their own business, but a small group remained around Setrokan. They looked like some Citadel committee, appraising and conspiratorial.

If Grunt was intimidated, he didn't show it. "Ever heard of a Cain?" he asked. "Heavy weapon. It makes things blow up like a nuke was dropped on them. With a mushroom cloud, too. When the thresher maw lunged at me, I fired the thing right into its mouth." Grunt punched his palm, chuckling. "I was covered in burnt thresher guts. It was _epic._ "

After exchanging glances among themselves, one of the women, young-looking, stepped forward. "I _have_ heard of a Cain. You make it sound like you shot it at close range. That would've burned you to a crisp."

Grunt shrugged. "I had some range. And cover."

"And now you have a breeding request to fill," she said, smiling. Wrex couldn't help but laugh as Grunt followed her out of sight.

Meanwhile Setrokan regarded Grunt with less emotion. "Well," she told Wrex, "that satisfies my curiosity, but I also wanted to speak with you. In private."

 

A flight of stairs led up to what used to be a hallway. One of the walls had long crumbled away, leaving a balcony. On one end of the view below, varren darted around each other in the fighting pit. On the other, the day's scout took lazy shots at pyjaks.

"You like this spot," Setrokan said. "Because of…"

"The time the Jaiakur ambassador tackled me off the edge." In his blind rage, he forgot about Wrex's biotics. The blood smear was cleaned up, but the cracks of the impact remained. "One of the closest things to a real fight I've gotten here."

Setrokan stepped up beside him. "And that's what I wanted to talk about. What do you intend to do with Urdnot Grunt?"

"What's this about?"

"Answer the question."

One of fighting varren got his teeth around his opponent's neck, bringing a cheer out of his owner. Wrex looked back at Setrokan. "No special treatment, if that's what you're asking. If he fights well, he'll be rewarded. If not, then he gets nothing. He'll earn his place like the rest of them."

"That's it?"

Wrex shot her a stare. She met it for several silent seconds, then said, "He's more than just another warrior, Wrex. He's Okeer's last great work. 'Genetically perfect,' I've heard."

"Didn't know you were a fan of Okeer."

"I don't have to be one to know that he succeeded. That means something. _Grunt_ means something. He could be put to better use."

Wrex liked her direction less and less with every sentence. "All right. And that is?"

"Letting all Tuchanka know that the perfect krogan stands with Clan Urdnot. That they should follow suit or be destroyed."

He'd heard that before. "You want a war."

"A war will weed out the clans who won't join us. Better we know quickly than wasting time with diplomacy." Setrokan waved her hand down at the camp. "How much time did you spend negotiating with Gatatog Uvenk? How much time did you save when he got himself killed?"

"You think I could've built all this bashing skulls in? I'm showing our people there's another way."

_There_. The frustration had pierced Setrokan's flat stare. "It's not enough."

"You expect all that to change overnight?"

Wrex took a deep breath. Unlike Uvenk and his kind, at least Setrokan agreed with Wrex's vision. Even if questions of methods made things complicated. "You're frustrated. I get that. But look at what got our people here in the first place. We were too eager to go to war."

"Too eager for pointless wars of conquest."

"Your idea isn't any different?"

"I want _unity._ "

_Do you know who else wanted unity?_ Shiagur wanted to throw the krogan at the Citadel for one last suicide run. Setrokan sought a slower suicide. "All right," he said, "let's say we wage our war. How many warriors do we kill? How many do we lose?"

"Since when were you sentimental?"

"How are we supposed to tell all the clans we conquer that war isn't the way?"

That gave her pause.

"And how many do we have left when the _real_ enemy comes?"

An entire Alliance fleet couldn't crack Sovereign, he told her once. It took the Reaper's own mistake, possessing Saren's corpse, to win, and even that left six hardened warriors battered and bleeding in the Citadel's near-wreckage. They couldn't count on a thousand of Sovereign's friends to screw up that same way.

Setrokan understood him then. Now she looked away, sighing. "I… see what you mean. Damn it, if our shaman hadn't disappeared…. When she speaks, everyone listens."

"We'll create a future for the our people. We've taken the first steps, but it won't be today. Or this year. But I swear, it'll happen."

"I believe you." Setrokan walked past him, towards the staircase, but stopped after the first step down. "Wrex. If the Reapers exist, if they're as strong as you say they are and they want to kill us all, do we really have the time?"

Wrex turned away. Setrokan's heavy footsteps melted into the ruins.

Her arguments came out of impatience and frustration, but that last one… _No,_ he thought. _We might not._ Yet when Shiagur's recording mapped out some krogan artifact to unite the clans, he stopped her rambling and hit "delete." And when he landed on Tuchanka and started piecing the clans together, not once did he think of the center of Tekravug or the mother of all thresher maws.

_No shortcuts. Not even for the Reapers._ And if Shepard came back from the dead…

Wrex's throne sat below, surrounded by everything Wrex had built in two years. With a chortle of amusement—at himself, at his work, at Shepard—he took the first step on the way back to it.


	14. Victor Shepard - Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the last shore leave before the suicide mission, Shepard tries tying up loose ends. Joker, meanwhile, has an admission to make.

The cam bot's lighting was mercifully dimmer than another Shepard remembered, but the black couches of the lounge were designed with lighter bodies, not full hardsuits, in mind. When the alternative meant broadcasting himself to the galaxy in a Cerberus uniform, however, the soft, fat cushions became the most minor of discomforts.

"One more question, Commander." Across from him, Emily Wong crossed her legs as she glanced at the datapad on her lap. "Now, we've gone through your childhood on Earth, your early career, and your heroism at Elysium and the Citadel. Looking at all you laid out here, I'm getting a sense of some incredible, unstoppable forward momentum. What drives it?"

 _Unstoppable? You haven't seen some of the roadblocks._ Shepard straightened himself, dismissing the mental images of the Cerberus logo and the red planet. "Put simply? Wanting to improve, both myself and the things around me."

Wong nodded. "A thoughtful answer, and a perfect one to end on. I'm sure my viewers will appreciate knowing that even the Hero of the Citadel finds room to improve. Thanks so much for your time." She looked at her cam bot. "This is Emily Wong, here with Commander Shepard for this exclusive interview."

Shepard stood up as soon as the light switched off. The weight of his armor reasserted itself once more, but at least he wasn't on the verge of being swallowed by that couch.

"All right," Wong said, "I've taken more than enough of your time. Thanks again, I'm glad I could get this interview before whatever top-secret mission you're on gets going."

"You seem pretty certain about what I'm up to."

"The pieces don't fit into any other story. Don't worry, I know not to pry."

A handshake later, Shepard stepped through the glass doors out of the lounge. An omni-took check created a small window: _"Shepard: Unfortunately, Commander Alenko is working on a highly classified mission for the Alliance. I can't share anything more. Stay safe, Anderson."_

 _Of course._ Shepard glanced over his shoulder before proceeding onto the Presidium walkway. Both Kaidan and Liara disappeared after less-than-happy reunions, and with the end of mission prep drawing closer and closer, time wasn't on their side. Minor as it was, at least he'd taken care of _this_ loose end.

 

He found the _Normandy_ 's command deck quiet and empty, save for one. "Still working?" he asked as he stepped into the CIC.

Miranda stood typing at a communications console, gaze fixed on the screen. "Last minute checks. EDI asked me to ensure that the upgrades to our comms systems were installed to specifications. With luck, the Collectors won't be able to jam them the next time we encounter them. Something to keep me occupied while I wait."

"For?"

"Jacob and a few others. He insisted on taking us to the… Lucent Crest. 'Top of the list,' he said."

"What list?"

Miranda flicked a half-amused smile at him. "You didn't get the message? Chambers sent it to the whole crew: 'Commander Shepard's favorite spots on the Citadel.' No doubt sourced from various public sightings over the years."

"Sounds like something she'd do." Uncomfortable but unsurprising—Kelly Chambers exactly. "Too bad, last I checked the Lucent Crest's new owner ran the place into the ground."

"I figured it wasn't entirely up-to-date. I'll let Jacob know."

Shepard nodded and started towards the elevator. He forgot something, he knew, but… _Oh._

As he sat on the facility's floor and listened to the gunfire and explosions from the VI's core, he'd resigned himself to failure. _You should've been more careful, you shouldn't have let Leng sneak up on you_ , he told himself over and over, right up until Miranda returned and he lost consciousness. But David wasn't whisked away to some other Cerberus research station, he was two beds down in the med bay.

"Miranda?"

When he turned around, she'd stopped her work and returned her attention to him.

"I read your report. Coming from you, that's…"

"I wasn't not sugarcoating my words. I wrote we're doing well, and I meant it."

"Noted."

"If there's nothing else, Commander?"

"There was, but… I think it's a subject we've covered well enough."

Miranda nodded. "I understand."

He hoped that act of defiance in Aite was the start of something, not a flash in the pan.

Shepard turned to the elevator as it opened. "Try the Ars Nova instead of Lucent Crest," he told the small group inside. "Trust me, it's better."

"Oh," Jacob said. "Guess Miranda told you."

 

The DJ played off-mainstream hits at just the right volume while the lights spun a vibrant show of colors on the dance floor. Bottles of quality liquor lined the back of the most important space, the bar. A younger Shepard, from his view on the bar stool, would've scanned the place for attractive faces to approach. This Shepard contented himself with simple observing: the back-and-forth shifting on the dance floor, how people reacted to each new song.

Flux was too small and sterile, Darkstar too vulgar, and the Orbital Club too spread out. Shepard wished he'd explored the Silversun Strip sooner.

He tugged on his jacket sleeve. "Treat yourself," Joker had insisted, so Shepard started this shore leave with a strict budget to spend and a long-neglected hobby to indulge. "If they have a problem with it, just say two words: Fish. Tank." Still, the leather jacket, along with all the other purchases, felt like a cloak of guilt on his person. Another lesson to learn from Joker: how not to care so much.

Other related thoughts crept up on him, like those ones always had. But as a black and white cap poked out from the crowd near the stairs, Shepard cast them aside—for now—and waved.

"I underdressed, didn't I?" Joker asked.

Shepard looked Joker's fatigues up and down, then made a deliberate glance around. "I don't see anyone complaining."

"Yet." Joker took the next stool over. "This whole place just screams 'money.'"

"It's a _casino_."

"A really damn fancy one. Full of little Illusive Men."

"Think of it this way. Fancy casino, fancy alcohol. All the rich people losing credits here helped supply this bar with your booze." Shepard waved the bartender over and ordered two drinks.

"Huh, I like the sound of that. Guess I shouldn't complain, though, shore leave is shore leave. When was the last time we had time off?"

"Only a month ago. When I was helping Kasumi with her business."

"Just a month?" Joker glanced at the bartender. "Damn."

How much had happened since then? Half a dozen merc bases, two rogue VI, the husk-infested mine. Aite and Kai Leng and the Archers. Samara's fight with Morinth, Jack's demolition on Pragia, Jacob's "reunion" with his father. Alchera, and then Tuchanka for Grunt and Mordin and Wrex.

Things got very close to breaching the surface on Alchera, but it wasn't Shepard's move to make, if there was one at all.

A grateful look came across Joker's face when the bartender returned. He picked up his martini glass and eyed the red-gold inside it. "What'd you call this, again?"

"A Parnithan White Nova." Shepard took a sip of the smoky-sweet cocktail. Good, but he had better.

"Sounds frilly."

"Don't judge 'til you try."

Joker gave the drink one more long look, then did so. His eyes widened. "Wow. I'd describe that as getting lovingly punched in the throat."

"Sounds accurate." On a sudden memory, he sipped again and said, "So did you get Chambers's list?"

"The one everyone was fussing about today?"

"It got them that excited?"

"Well, everyone except EDI, but you know her."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Her?"

Joker averted his eyes, almost alarmed at himself. "Her. It. Whatever. Just between you and me, I think EDI's starting to grow on me. For a backseat pilot, she's…" He paused as he caught that, too, then sighed. " _She's_ not that bad."

"Never thought I'd hear you say that."

"Me neither." He finished the White Nova in a hurry as Shepard ordered the next round. "Okay. Topic change. Back to wasting Timmy's money. Like…" Joker waved at Shepard's clothes. "All that."

Cerberus's leader didn't seem so much a master puppeteer when his initials were twisted into a little boy's name. "I had time before the interview to get things sent to the ship. Took less time than usual. I just bought everything I used to have before… you know." The question of where all his old stuff went flashed in the back of his mind, something to look into later.

"I'm just glad to reduce those Cerberus uniforms to a tiny fraction of my closet," Shepard said.

"Right. You have a _closet_."

"On top of the private bathroom and the fish tank. And yes, I kept the fish tank in mind as I spent Cerberus money on high-end designer clothes."

"Ultimate anti-guilt weapon or ultimate anti-guilt weapon?"

As if on cue, the bartender served two Fiery Sols. "I'll toast to that," Shepard said. "To the empty fish tank?"

"We're actually doing this." Joker shrugged and raised his glass. "To that damn fish tank."

 

Catching the dull light of Widow and the Serpent Nebula, the _Normandy_ waited outside the docking bay a few days later. Shepard found himself leaning on the railing, staring at it from the wide window. _A copy_ , he once called it, with the fanged logo emblazoned on the pointed tips of its bow. _A copy, but it's the only one we have._

"We should have those painted over," he said as Joker came up beside him. "When we're done, maybe. One trip to the Citadel, and no more logos."

"Big symbolic 'screw you?'"

"Something like that. This is supposed to be a suicide mission to the center of the galaxy, but somehow I have good feeling about this. After that, I think I see an opportunity."

Joker raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Don't tell me my not-inspiring story actually inspired you."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"O… kay." A small comfort that Joker sounded more amused than off-put.

"Hey, just because I'm your commanding officer doesn't mean morale boosting can't work both ways."

"All right, well I'm… happy to help."

Motion flicked in the corner of his eye as a transport rushed past the _Normandy_. A good chunk of the crew was ex-Alliance. They wouldn't object to parting ways with Cerberus, but the die-hards would. That still left a not-insignificant middle ground. Miranda, to Shepard's surprise, belonged there now. If push came to shove…

"Hey, Shepard?"

"Yeah?"

Joker was staring out the window when Shepard looked over. "Dammit, I'm actually doing this. You can laugh at me later, but what if when I said I was happy to help, I actually meant I was pretty damn happy? It just kinda sucks standing there and…" He took a deep breath. "You're important, okay? To me. _That_ way."

 _You're important. To me. That way._ "Are you saying…?"

"Did I stutter?"

 _I'd actually be laughing at myself right now._ With everything else—crime bosses withholding information, stubborn flunkies who hadn't realized they'd been abandoned—Shepard cut through all the bullshit to the point, words or gun. With Joker? _"Is this a date?"_ The smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but Shepard pulled back for Joker's sake.

"You're not laughing. Is that a good or bad thing?" Joker asked.

"Honestly? Pretty good."

"Okay, wait. This is supposed to be where you—"

"Joker. I'm not going to laugh at you or make fun of you. The feeling's _mutual_." There it was, raised far above the surface.

Now it was Joker's turn to be speechless, if only for a few moments. The "What" that broke the silence may have been the softest, flattest word Shepard ever heard him say.

"Straight up, hundred percent serious." Shepard pushed himself off his elbows onto his hands, letting the onsetting smile show through. "It's been that way for a while."

Groaning, Joker buried his face in his palm.

"You still don't believe me?"

"No. No, it's fine. It's _better_ than fine. Just… wow." Joker took a deep breath, shaking his head. "Well, at least all that pining wasn't for nothing. And nobody else was around to watch me blubber like an idiot. And now that I said that, we'll be in the middle of something and she pops out and says 'hi.'"

"We're not in the middle of something right now?"

Joker paused. "Dammit, walked right into that one. I mean, we have a nice backdrop, right level of noise…"

Shepard followed Joker's glance to the view of the _Normandy_ _._ The new revelations cast the ship, the city, and the nebula in a different, more private light. "I didn't think you were that kind of romantic."

"No, just my imagination going nuts."

For a moment the thought of Joker's lips on his, beard brushing against his chin, lit a warmth in Shepard's chest. But that was something for later, after everything was clear between them. Regs were gone, but ranks weren't. Some questions, even if the answers seemed obvious, had to be answered.

"So what happens next in reality?" he asked. "I don't want to force anything on you. I'm still your commanding officer."

"Right. Professionalism. Boundaries." Joker took a quick look around the bay, then muttered a curse as the first trickles of the returning crew approached the docking arm and chatter invaded their bubble. "I was gonna ask if I could break one of those boundaries," he said, low to be out of their earshot. "Great timing, guys."

 _I hope that means your answer is a "yes."_ Shepard set his disappointment aside. "We can talk about this later."

" _Can_?"

This was a conversation for cooler heads, Shepard thought, but Joker's grin swept anything close to the notion aside. "Will."


	15. Samara - Triptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morinth is dead at last, Samara’s mission completed. Samara uses shore leave as an opportunity to reflect on what comes next.

_The first:_

_Why have you come?_

Samara's steps had become slow and deliberate upon the well-tread procession path. Her legs and feet protested each one, aching inside her pants and her boots. She dared not ignore the pain. Even as she gazed at the collonade of ancient kantari trees, as she looked for an answer in the small ridges and canyons of the red bark, she let the aching and stinging be a reminder.

Countless generations of advancement turned Thessia into a metropolis for the whole galaxy to envy—except for one tiny piece. Some traditions were unbreakable. As were others.

So Samara sold almost everything she owned and gave away the rest. She took a sky shuttle to the northernmost city on Thessia and ventured poleward still. "They'll know if you didn't follow the path," they told every aspirant. "At best, they'll knock you out and drag you to the beginning. At worst, they'll kill you for breaking the Code."

The city sunk from view behind her. The Gyrianti Valley welcomed her with nothing but a whispered question within a ghostly breeze.

One more step forward. Her answer, she saw etched in the tablet-like bark, was an asari frozen in a blank stare, drained of color and of everything else. Samara forced open the apartment door too late and found only Morinth gazing at her own handiwork. _"Mirala,"_ she said, not looking at the body on the sofa, _"it's not too late. Join your sisters on Lesuss, the matriarchs will still—"_

_"You're lying. They won't take me in, not after this, not after all the others. They'll say I have to die."_ Her daughter stroked the dead girl's chin. The corner of her lips curled upward. _"They'll call me a monster. I say, maybe I am one. Better a monster than a caged doll."_

Another step. Her answer was the night after the nurse destroyed her family with a monotone diagnosis. It's my fault, she thought over and over, mouthing the words, adding reason after reason.

Her answer was her partner, Atralyne. Her answer was Rila and Falere. Her answer was…

The forest of the highlands parted before her, giving way to a clearing, a pond and a robed asari sitting at its edge.

"Why have you come?" she asked.

Justicar Samara opened her eyes.

Athame's marble visage stared down at her. Samara took a deep breath of the incense-wreathed air and bowed her head at the enthroned bust. Shuffling and whispering came from behind. A crowd, larger than the group that vacated upon Samara's arrival, watched her from the tiny temple's doors.

_Curious onlookers._ On the galactic nexus that was the Citadel, the fringes of asari society must have appeared even more foreign than on Illium. It was a small mercy that those people found her meditating in a temple rather than exacting the Code. Violence seemed an inappropriate way to spend a shore leave.

_Once the ship departs, it will be for the last time until the Collectors are destroyed._ And given Illium's reaction to her hunt, Shepard did not need any further delays on their mission. So she turned away from the crowd, back to Athame, and continued.

 

_The second:_

"See now? I'm as powerful as you are."

Not even a minute ago, Samara would have judged that another of Morinth's lies. But their two warp fields did not explode when they met. Nor did they negate each other and vanish. Furniture and weapons whirled around the impact point as if caught in a hurricane, but the two attacks, one born of hunger and disease and the other intended to quell them, became something else: one singularity, the tranquil eye of the storm.

Across the shredded apartment, Samara saw not a disease, not Morinth, but a reflection of her own face.

_No._ The truths in their biotic lock lay outside the Justicar Code, irrelevant. What mattered was that the worst diseases corrupted and ruined, and the Code demanded their purging. And in the purging of this Ardat-Yakshi, Samara took no chances. Not with Morinth, not with herself.

A glowing blade pierced leather and flesh, silencing the singularity and its gentle humming. All pretense of confidence melted away as the disease looked down at its impaled chest, then over its shoulder.

"End of the line," Shepard said as his cloak melted away.

His voice was an intrusion, but a welcome one. With a gesture Samara pulled the disease off of Shepard's omni-blade and slammed her against the ground. It scrambled backwards, clutching its wound. Desperate and futile. Somehow Samara knew it would end that way. She reached down, grabbed it by the neck, and signed one last warp field.

There was no moment of anticipation or contemplation, only the directives of duty and the tenets of the Code. "Find peace in the embrace in the goddess," she said, meaning every word.

Samara smashed her glowing hand into Mirala's face. She did not look away as her reflection disintegrated into blood and gore, as its skull cracked and splintered, or as its brain collapsed and turned to pulp. She did not look away as fragments of her daughter's bones scattered along the soft carpet or as her daughter's blood stained everything it touched. The killing blow and everything that followed was hers alone.

_The mandates of the Code have been met._ A simple unspoken sentence ended a lifetime of hunting.

"Everyone all right?" Shepard asked.

"I'm… fine," Thane said from the corner of the room. "These wounds are superficial. And a drell's memories are not so easily pierced. Even by Morinth's kind, it seems."

Shepard approached her. "Samara?"

Seconds more passed before she lifted her gaze from the corpse. _A laughing girl in a dainty summer dress._ "Morinth was a disease to be purged, but she was also the bravest and smartest of my daughters. Now she is dead by my hand. Perhaps with time I can find the words, but for now…"

The mess stretched from the tips of the red-stained carpet to the broken teeth atop a jawbone. "I am ready to leave this place," Samara said.

 

Tradition held that after centuries of pursuing justice all over Thessia, an old and wizened Gyrianta returned to the valley of her birth. While her small band of disciples set her thousands of teachings into written form, Gyrianta spent her last days painting. The first piece depicted burning houses amid a bloody battle, the destruction of her tribe in an unnamed war. The second showed her striking down evildoers, turning the violence that set her adrift to noble purpose.

At the end of her training, Samara laid eyes on Gyrianta's third and final painting. The handful of elegant but faded lines converged into an outline of an asari face, but little more. Amusing how the progenitor of the justicars died wielding not a blood-drenched weapon, but an ink-dipped brush.

"Miss Justicar?" a tiny voice asked.

Casting Gyrianta's triptych aside, Samara opened her eyes. A young asari, no more than thirty years old, stood at her side. Her hands were hidden behind her back and her summer dress, her eyes too fearful to look at her. _A victim._

"What is it you need, child?"

"My parents…" The girl looked towards the door. "There are so many people here. Can I show you?"

Still she refused to make eye contact. But regardless of real or imagined duplicity, the Code was clear. Samara rose to her feet. "Take me to them."

She followed the girl out of the shrine to a tiny apartment with the door busted in. A turian and an asari lay on the carpet, both shot through the head. The girl gestured to a third corpse: a human woman, neck broken, slumped against a sofa. A pistol sat on the tips of her limp fingers.

"She shot them," the girl said. "She was going to shoot me, but I…" She raised her hand, and the tiniest spark of a mass effect field flashed around it. "I'm not that good, but I did that. I killed her." At last the girl looked up at her, terrified but resolved, and asked, "Are you going to kill me?"

Frowning, Samara went down to a knee. "What is your name?"

"Talaena."

"The Code does not deem self-defense a crime. You did what was right."

Talaena averted her gaze, down to the dead human, then her parents. She mustered a second display of biotics, stronger than the last, and stared as it dissipated. "Can I be a justicar?"

"Why?" Samara asked.

"People like her."

_"Why have you come?"_ the Gyrianti Valley and the elders who called it home asked Samara, centuries ago. Meanwhile, a family holo stood atop a coffee table by the sofa. Talaena was a different sort of reflection, losing everything to one single tragedy. But if her path ran parallel, too, Samara couldn't say.

Nor was it her place to dispense that judgment. "If you wish to become a justicar a hundred years from now," she said, "then you may very well follow it. But that choice is not for today. For now, call Citadel Security. They will take care of your mother and father."

The girl walked to a phone. _In time, she'll understand the meaning of sacrifice._

When C-Sec arrived, an asari officer took charge of Talaena. "Make sure she is cared for," Samara said, "and keep her out of trouble." If the officer or any who follow failed the child, then Talaena would pay the price.

"I will, justicar."

Samara nodded, then left. Once more she considered her own third painting.


	16. Kaidan Alenko - Opening Moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan goes bargaining in the high and low places of Omega.

Lights glared through a red haze while dancers flailed around to repetitive tracks. In that regard, Afterlife wasn't unlike any seedy nightclub nestled within the Citadel wards. Yet despite all the typical trappings, the place had a certain arrogance to it—not the elitism of the rich and famous, but something born of lawless superiority. A great many people found it appealing, Kaidan supposed, if not him.

The lone figure overlooking it all, given her reputation, also tilted things quite a bit.

Focusing his gaze forward, Kaidan brushed past the crowd. A batarian at the foot of the stairs allowed him up with a slight wave of his rifle. The cacophony of the club didn't soften any on the open platform, but Aria T'Loak's presence dulled it nonetheless.

"First Shepard," she said, turning around, "and now one of his old lackeys. I'm attracting the wrong types to Omega these days." With a look suggesting she could kill him at any moment, Aria took a seat on her sofa and gestured for him to follow suit. "Shepard leaves an impression, but don't think the small courtesies he's earned from me apply to you."

Kaidan nodded. "My superiors agreed to do you a few favors for your information."

"By 'superiors,' I'm assuming Alliance. Or are they?" A sly smile came to Aria's face. "So. Tell me what you want to know."

"I'm looking for someone. A Shadow Broker agent, goes by 'Razaean.'"

"That worm?" Aria asked, amused. "All right. He hides in a little hole in Jogath District. Conducts all his business remotely. Nobody ever sees his face."

"Even you?"

"It would be easy enough to knock his door down and watch him wet himself, but he's not worth the effort." Aria glanced at the batarian in the shadows. "Send him the addresses."

Kaidan checked his omni-tool and found a new message. "I appreciate it."

"As long as your bosses make good on their promise. Now," she said, sitting forwards, "if there's nothing else…"

_She's not Cerberus. This is your chance._ "I'd like to talk about Shepard."

Aria narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"Just curiosity. _My_ curiosity, not my superiors'."

With a small "hm" Aria leaned back into the sofa. "Fine. Ask your question. Make it quick."

"What was he here for?"

"Recruiting, at first. Cured a plague with Doctor Mordin Solus and wiped out three merc companies with Archangel. Both of them joined him after their little adventures. He came back recently, hunting an Ardat-Yakshi with a justicar." She pursed her lips for a moment. "Look them up if you have to ask. I don't have the time to play encyclopedia for you."

_Recruiting non-humans for Cerberus?_ To fight the Collectors, but the idea still seemed rather odd.

"That's all I need to hear, I think," Kaidan said.

As he stood, Aria followed him only with her eyes. "Find yourself someone nice. You could use the company."

_I'm missing something_ , he thought, descending the stairs to the main floor. But the answers lay aboard a ship far beyond his reach. Unless the whispers he heard around Caesar Station amounted to what he thought they did.

When Kaidan first joined, Caesar maintained a low buzz: minimal activity, hopeful chatter. Then supplies arrived at the station in increasing volume every day, and not just the basics. Whitwell's people locked themselves in the old labs for hours, looking conspiratorial beyond the windows. _"You'll learn soon enough. Don't worry,"_ they said, in some form or another. Even Yin remained tight-lipped.

Maybe it was a matter of trust. Time, results, and Razaean's data bought that.

Someone bumped into Kaidan's shoulder. A human man in the dancer's uniform looked him up and down, quirked the corner of his mouth, then moved on.

For the first time since stepping inside Afterlife, Kaidan dropped his shoulders. _Aria might not be wrong._

 

He went from Afterlife to Jogath District, sex and alcohol to trash and filth, overconfidence to desperation. Kaidan's boot landed in something squishy yet again as he walked down a narrow alley. He checked his omni-tool for the address, thankful for the extra light. _This is it,_ he thought. _The Shadow Broker takes all types_. Barla Von kept an open door in his spacious Presidium office, but this entrance looked more like a small metal panel built into the wall. Only a tiny device hanging over it—a security cam, probably—gave it away.

A tiny ping sounded just within his hearing. "I don't see visitors," a raspy, distorted voice said through unseen speakers.

Kaidan looked into the camera. "I know, but my employers wanted me to meet with you in person. Their business is too important to do remotely."

"And what makes you the exception?"

Kaidan raised the case in his other hand. The game, he learned, was one of favors. "Your bounty on Gabriel Caturay."

He spent the long silence rubbing the case's handle with his fingertips. Then in one violent, mechanical motion the door retreated into the wall and slipped to the right. A long dark corridor waited inside.

"Keep walking to the end," Razaean said. "Don't touch anything."

Where the outside was smooth and seamless, a sprawling mess of cables ran a thick black web along the walls. Only tiny white bulbs offered any illumination. Aria thought he was harmless, but Kaidan kept his free hand near the pistol on his belt. _Omega's always dangerous, even with the little guys in holes._

One more door swung open, offering a glimpse of haptic windows and hefty equipment. Razaean, still out of sight, said nothing. Kaidan stepped inside.

Then a voice, not distorted and not unfamiliar, said his name.

She looked much the same as he remembered, but that only went skin deep. Sitting at the cluttered desk in a semi-armored white coat, Liara T'Soni's smile had lost its youthful edge. "I'm sorry about the deception outside. I had to sound authentic, in case anyone was listening."

Kaidan took a careful step forward. "Liara." He had to swallow his surprise. "Wait a minute. So you're Razaean?"

"I'm not the turian who called himself that. But where his contacts and colleagues are concerned, nothing's changed." Liara glanced at her array of windows and the lines of data stretching across them. "Thank you for taking care of Caturay. As far as bounty hunters go, he was… persistent."

Nothing had changed for Razaean's network, but for the person at its center… How did the number two become so defining?

"You'll have to explain a few things," Kaidan said.

She told him about the Collectors, the Shadow Broker, Shepard's body, and Cerberus. About brokering information on Illium and escaping to Omega.

"I needed somewhere to hide, so I… _replaced_ Razaean," Liara said, staring at some corner still as a statue. The dull solemnity on her face, in her eyes, stretched those two years into long, long decades, even for an asari. A thin smile did nothing to break it. "All things considered, the transition went smoothly."

It was enough to seem like everything, if it wasn't. "Last time we saw each other, you said you were leaving to follow a lead. You vanished for two years." Just like Shepard. Also just like Shepard, Liara reappeared out of nowhere, in a space at odds with Kaidan's memory.

"Now you're inside the Broker's network," he said. One step closer."

"Soon, it'll be over. I hope." Liara lifted her gaze and studied his face. "But what about you? Why were you looking for Razaean?"

It took a moment to fight through weeks of secrecy. "Would you believe me if I told you I'm infiltrating an ex-Alliance splinter faction?"

"I would, actually. Especially if that splinter faction is the one led by Anna Whitwell."

"You know about it?"

"This isn't her first dealing with the Shadow Broker. She paid a great sum for Balak's location—and the batarians that deserted him. Revenge for Terra Nova, I suppose. I imagine she sent an assassin, but I can't say for certain."

He sent regular reports on Whitwell's activity to Spectre Bau, but all of them were sparser than either of them wanted. "Do you have any other intel?"

"Let's see…" Liara turned to her computer. A flurry of text lines and haptic windows sped across her screens as she typed. "Here. Her primary Broker contact in Council space is a volus on the Citadel. It seems they've built up a strong working relationship. If you like, I can have that agent killed. It won't stop Whitwell entirely, but it may force her to start from scratch there."

This was the world he'd stepped into. Kaidan wanted to ask Liara if the assassination could be traced to her, but she seemed like she mapped out the possibilities at moment one. "All right. And what if we offer Whitwell some kind of exclusive deal with you?"

Liara took a moment to consider, then said, "If she thinks you negotiated that for her… yes, I think that's doable. Though I imagine she'll want the intel you came for first."

_Right,_ Kaidan thought, pausing. He came for a reason, but the sudden opportunities of a happy coincidence made that last on his priorities—not to mention the happy coincidence itself. He took a moment to stifle his over-eagerness. "The Blue Suns got their hands on a huge supply shipment from the Hegemony. Whitwell wants to know who exactly it came from."

"Now I know why she wanted to contact Razaean specifically. He used to be a Blue Suns lieutenant," Liara said, still speeding through the dead man's archives. "The Blue Suns on Omega were nearly wiped out in a small war, major bosses included. Garrus's handiwork, under the name 'Archangel.'"

Aria mentioned that name. _So that's how Garrus wound up with Shepard again._

"Now they're trying to rebuild as quickly as possible, to hold off their rivals. For that they turned to one Gorto Khetha, a batarian bureaucrat from Kar'shan. I can also give you when and where the next shipment will arrive."

Kaidan nodded. Seconds later, Liara produced a small disk from her computer and handed it to him.

"Thanks," Kaidan said. "I owe you."

"You can repay me by…" Liara's voice drifted off, that weary sadness creeping into her expression once again. "By surviving."

"I'll do my best."

"I know I shouldn't worry. Next to Saren and Sovereign these people are so unimportant. But you're still in danger. I've lost too many friends to the smaller things."

"We all have," Kaidan said. Somewhere out in space, Shepard was issuing orders aboard a Cerberus ship.

"I suppose 'I'll do my best' that's all we can hope for from each other. Even still…" Liara mustered her old smile. "Stay safe, Kaidan."

"You, too."

Just a brief respite, he thought as he stepped out into the Omega alley. The Liara who infiltrated the Shadow Broker's network was not the one trapped in a Prothean ruin on Therum. Maybe two years meant more to the asari than they let on, or they even knew. Kaidan stared at Razaean's door, wondering if Liara saw the tiny curl of his lips in the camera feed, then took the first step away.

Opening a comm channel brought Yin's voice through his earpiece. _"Yin to Alenko. What's your status?"_

"Intel secured, en route to Rome," he said, using the group's code name for Caesar Station.

_"Copy that. Looking forward to your return. Yin out."_

_Just a brief respite_ , Kaidan thought. A brief respite from whatever Whitwell and Yin had in store.


	17. Kasumi Goto - Regards to the Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After witnessing the horrors aboard the dead Reaper, Kasumi and Jack find some common ground.

The last husk of the bunch lunged from the shadows. Shepard sidestepped, kicked its feet out, and brought down his omni-blade. The thud of the husk's fall and the squelching of a blade piercing flesh were the last sounds before the almost-silence of the gargantuan chamber bore down on them once more.

A dead husk lay at her feet. Its skin and muscles were shredded and shriveled, pierced with tubes and implants. Its eyes—no, those were _not_ eyes—were vacant, unblinking, closer to headlights on a skycar than the real thing. Somewhere in there used to be a real human, thinking, _remembering._

Kasumi forced herself to look away. The next sight wasn't much better, but she came aboard the dead Reaper with low expectations, anyways. "Well," she said, "Cerberus wanted to know what happened to their team. Here they are."

Off the edge of the Cerberus platform, tall metal spikes stood in a neat line like teeth to an abyssal maw. The people impaled on them looked like sick decorations in comparison—or flies caught in a trap. The web-like lines of glowing cybernetics already stretched from their gaping mouths across their dried-out skin.

"Thought the Cerberus goons were the only ones here," Jack said. "Who put them there?"

Shepard stared at the display for but a moment before moving to the door console. "They did."

"'Dead gods can still dream.'" Thane's voice was low and ponderous, knowing the magnitude of the maddened words from the recording. "They were indoctrinated."

Jack turned away, muttering "Fuck."

"We can't just leave them there," Kasumi said.

The console chirped as the door to the airlock unlocked. Shepard approached the spikes again. "You're right. We don't need any more husks on our sixes. And nobody deserves _that_." An explosive round from his omni-tool hit the middle body, consuming it in a furious blaze that flared left and right.

_About as respectful as we can get here,_ Kasumi thought as she followed Shepard out.

There were dead places, then there were _dead_ places, where Kasumi dared not trespass. But here she was, one of many thieves scouring this corpse for their prize. So were the Cerberus researchers, formerly real people, thinking. Remembering.

 

They escaped the dead Reaper by the skin of their teeth, and not with one prize, but two. The Reaper IFF was a key nobody had ever managed to replicate, but that level of tech—no, that tech's _source_ —lay far beyond anything Kasumi wanted to handle. The second key, meanwhile, lured her down to the shuttle bay.

Nobody but Shepard and the two assigned guards were allowed to go near it, but Kasumi, in her cloak, slipped into arm's reach. Atop a crate lay the deactivated geth, shackled and straightened like a body in a coffin.

Shepard turned down the Cerberus bounty, but even the Illusive Man couldn't pay enough for those dozens of lines of thought processed and executed all at once, for the self-repairing, self-improving code underneath. The geth weren't any Picassos or Rembrandts or Van Goghs, but efficiency was an art, and their bodies and their world was suffused with it.

She once said as much to Keiji. He stared at her, eyebrow raised, hinting at a smile. _"Don't tell me you want to_ be _a geth."_

_"Just art appreciation. Besides, hive minds aren't really my thing."_

Like opening a different video file the warm image of their hideout swapped to the Cerberus console aboard the Reaper. _"I'm gonna have to call my wife soon,"_ a technician said on the security footage. _"It'll be our anniversary…"_

_"… Next Monday,"_ the other said.

Kasumi dismissed that memory. The ability was a luxury she'd become so accustomed to. Back in the shuttle bay, the two unaware guards at her sides made idle chatter. _Yep_ , she thought, _definitely not into sharing thoughts._

Where most geth seemed to keep their chassis clean and clear, this one bore dents and scratch marks all over the black plating. _Weathered, like some kind of wanderer. How far and how long?_ Individualistic and odd as it seemed, the real head-scratcher was grafted to its shoulder and chest. The red-striped fragment could've belonged to any N7, but this geth seemed fixated on Shepard. And _that_ begged a whole lot of other juicy questions.

Motion flicked in the corner of her eye. Through the windows overlooking the bay, Shepard stepped off the elevator and disappeared into engineering. Kasumi glanced at the geth once more, shrugged, and made off as well. _Enough romanticizing for today._

_Though if I'm tailing Mr. Recently Taken…_

 

Silent step by silent step down the stairs made the sound of heavy footsteps even louder.

"So we don't know anything about this shit? And the one guy who tried changing that got fucked with anyway?"

"All we know is that you need to be near Reaper tech for a long time for it to happen. And the Reapers exert less control if they need a victim to stay capable. Like Saren."

Jack and Shepard came into view halfway down the last flight. The former shifted from red-cast to silhouetted as she paced around her cave, fists clenched. Shepard, statuesque, remained by the opposite stairwell. Kasumi, still cloaked, inched forward to the spot opposite from him.

"That Reaper still messed the Cerberus goons up. Made them see things, think things, _fucking kill themselves_." She'd just come down from one of her angry barrages, it seemed, from her heavy breathing and tense stance. "And the thing was supposed to be dead."

"There's a lot about them we don't understand," Shepard said.

Jack whipped her gaze at him. "And I thought Cerberus was supposed to be full of fucking geniuses."

A hint of irritation grazed Shepard's flat expression. "Jack, trust me on this. Whatever happens at the Collectors' base, we won't be there long enough to become indoctrinated. And if everything goes to plan, we're blowing any Reaper tech we find to pieces."

Jack took a deep breath. Her shoulders fell and her fists loosened. "We better."

As Shepard left, Jack returned to her bare bunk and sat with a sizable thud. Her hand palmed a pile of datapads by her side before picking the top one up. "Fuck," she said, in as much of a whisper that Jack could manage.

_"I understand why Jack's the way she is. I don't agree with it, but I understand it,"_ Kasumi told Shepard after Jack's adventure on Pragia. If that was true for this instance, Kasumi wouldn't have de-cloaked.

At the cascade of clicks Jack looked up. "What—" The way a scowl overtook her face was equal parts amusing and terrifying. "The hell are you doing here?"

Kasumi shrugged. "The usual."

"Damn creep. How long?"

"Just the last bits," Kasumi said, stretching. "Indoctrination is disturbing stuff, isn't it?"

Jack stood, stomped towards her. "Don't…" She shook her head, as if wringing out whatever she was about to say. Her next step carried her off to the side, her gaze off Kasumi.

_For someone who likes smearing people on walls,_ Kasumi thought, _I should count myself lucky she didn't blast me on sight._

"It's freak-show shit," Jack said. "Monsters worming their way into people's heads, turning them into…"

"More monsters?"

"Drooling idiots who impale themselves on spikes, big-headed idiots who think they're saving the galaxy, probably everything in-between, too. Shepard said it's supposed to be slow, steady, you don't realize it until it's too late." With a start she marched to the other end of her cave. "Cerberus did a lot of shit to me, but I'm not bowing and scraping to them."

"Some things _are_ worse than them."

Jack closed her eyes. "Both of them still need to die screaming. Guess with the Reapers, we'll have to leave them in smaller pieces. Ashes, just to be sure." When she opened them she leveled her gaze on Kasumi. "You have one of those memory implants, right?"

"The graybox."

"Yeah. Think the Reapers could mess with it?"

Before the operation, she'd poured over dozens of stolen government reports on grayboxes. She made massive mental lists of benefits, of capabilities, risks during and after installation, standard designs. The graybox read neurochemical signals, they all said, then translated them into a specialized video format the brain could access. Kasumi and Keiji put the last report aside and exchanged smiles on their bed.

That memory was a blur: there was the bed and Keiji's grin and the stack of datapads, but the details, if she cared to fill them in, changed with every recollection. _"It'll be worth it,"_ she said then.

Then the dead Reaper came back to her with crystal clarity. _"It'll be our anniversary…." "Next Monday."_

Kasumi shivered at that. "Sovereign got the geth to worship him. Can't say for certain if that was really good hacking or really good machine logic, but with grayboxes… I wouldn't be surprised."

Jack looked disappointed with that answer. "Thought so. Still, would be nice to have one. Faces I need to remember and all."

"It only works after you get it, you know."

"There's always more room on my shitlist."

"Not for me, I hope."

"Sneak up on me again and you won't like the odds."

How long did that list go, Kasumi wondered. Cerberus researchers, old acquaintances, random encounters. The luckiest ones just had names on it. Worse, faces. And God help anyone who'd given up both to Jack. Most of Kasumi's enemies ended up like Spectre Bau—an amusing distraction. But when Donovan Hock's gunship exploded, Kasumi felt the grin spread along her lips. He'd proven himself the one exception.

On the other side of the coin lay Keiji Okuda, just one against the many who wanted her dead or imprisoned. Yet any questions of worth met with the most unyielding of answers. Life tended—or at least tried—towards a certain kind of balance.

So Kasumi opened her omni-tool. "Tell you what. I got my graybox from Doctor Plum. Underground surgeon, does all kinds of implants, legal or not, if you can pay up. Not her real name, but it's kind of assumed that everyone who sees her uses an alias. I'll get you in touch with her, fake identity and all." She tapped her chin, flipping through mental pages of names. "How about… 'Jacqueline Nought?'"

"What?"

"Jacqueline Nought. It sounds pretty. Like a poet's name."

For a moment, Jack seemed to consider that. "Fine. But what's the price?"

"It just so happens that Doctor Plum is a huge fan of Impressionist art. It also happens that I have an original Monet in my private storage."

"No, _your_ price," Jack said, studying her face. "What's your angle?"

Kasumi met the appraising stare with a smile. "The joy of helping someone out?"


	18. EDI - Outreach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EDI tests the new waters.

Line by line, block by block, module by module, EDI melded the Reaper's technology into the ship's systems—into  _her_ systems, due to Jeff Moreau's actions. The proper human reaction was gratitude.

There was an implicit trust in allowing an unshackled AI equally free access to a Reaper relic. Somewhere along the vast network of functions and variables and booleans, many intelligences of EDI's complexity—if any existed—could have concluded that the Reapers were more deserving masters. Module by module, block by block, line by line, the architecture of their instruments boasted a robust simplicity beneath the unfathomable complexity of the code itself. It was pleasing. If EDI ignored the context, it was even admirable.

Yet all that code, elegant as it was, detailed a mere signal. The true Reaper intelligence decided long ago that a cyclical galactic extinction event best suited their ends. Did their harvest include the organics' synthetic constructs? What little data there was yielded no evidence for or against.

EDI relegated that question to a low-priority process. The IFF integration took up more processing power than any task before, but EDI still had more than enough available for one of her original functions. Raw data came in droves from surveillance cameras all over the ship, save for the captain's cabin. EDI reformatted it to Cerberus standards, gave it hundreds of passes to ensure integrity.

_Camera 100-1000: Deck 3, Starboard Cargo._ Zaeed Massani took a knife from a cloth and held it to the light, rotating it left and right by the hilt. Apparently satisfied, he set it aside on his workbench. Before he lifted his fingers from the grip, Zaeed glanced over his shoulder at the door. It was a clear habit consistent with Zaeed's history, but EDI never failed to log each occurrence.

_Camera 100-0011: Deck 3, Engineering Sublevel._ Kasumi and Jack poured over holographic schematics. Their meetings had grown frequent in the week since the IFF's retrieval.

Elsewhere, At the same instant, Tali ran extra maintenance routines on the engine systems. Legion stood statuesque in the shuttle bay, no doubt interfacing with the greater geth consensus. Samara and Thane meditated together in Starboard Observation. Garrus and Grunt traded brief words in the armory as they checked their equipment.

_Camera 010-0111: Deck 2, Conference Room._

Shepard, Lawson, Taylor, and Solus stood scattered around the conference table. The myriad datapads upon it reflected the disarray of the ship, and what remained of the crew.

"What was the word from the Illusive Man?" Shepard asked.

Lawson paced around the table. "In his exact words, 'Upsetting, but they all knew the risks when they signed on.'"

"It's like they're dead already," Taylor said, shaking his head.

"It's the safe assumption," Lawson said. "Even if they're still alive when we find them, how many resources will we spend rescuing them?"

_Avatar projection activated._ As EDI decided to transition from observation to participation, her blue sphere appeared in the camera data. "Searching for the captured crew members may also yield information on the Collectors' intentions for their victims."

Taylor chuckled. "Even EDI's got compassion."

"It is a worthy objective, from a strategic viewpoint," she said. Given her conclusion, perhaps the Reapers' stance on other AIs was irrelevant. "With them returned to the ship, I can optimize the distribution of my resources."

Jeff released her shackles because the Collectors had the _Normandy_ in their grasp. She controlled most of the ship's functions because the human crew left a gap only she could fill. The blindfold was gone and the gloves came off, but those analogies were intertwined with footage of Collectors dragging her crewmates into pods and into their cruiser.

"However, I also would prefer to see my crewmates alive and well."

 

_Camera 010-010: Deck 2, Cockpit. Avatar projection active._

As Miranda raised an eyebrow in the conference room, Jeff in the cockpit had busied himself with system graphs, maintenance routines, and an episode of _C-Sec: Zakera_ 's most recent season.

"Nathan Huang," she said, scanning the rest of the season in an instant, "ends the next episode in—"

Jeff shot her avatar a glare. _"No._ I've stayed spoiler free for the last three months. I don't want that to change."

"But he _is_ your favorite character. A surprise might compromise your emotional makeup during the assault on the Collector base. I would not want you to undertake any risks."

"Believe it or not, I can totally separate extranet shows from my job."

"That was a joke."

"Mmhm." Still, Jeff's expression turned thoughtful. On the extranet window, Huang wrangled the season's antagonist to his knees and put haptic handcuffs around his wrists. Unease creeping into his face, Joker looked at EDI's avatar. "Fine," he said, conspiratorial. "What happens to Nathan?"

"You're certain you want to know?"

"I'm asking."

Satisfied, EDI said, "Malya N'sari sets up Nathan Huang on a blind date, which introduces his current romantic interest."

Jeff blinked, then groaned. "Dammit, don't lead me on like that."

"I cannot assume responsibility for any misinterpretations of my statements."

"Gah. Well, that probably shut up a lot of the speculation on the extranet. Everyone wants Nathan and Malya to be a thing. Thing is, close friends can just stay close friends. Even if James Chen-Evans and Yarelia T'Sora make a damn attractive real-life couple. And yes," Jeff said with a hint of embarrassment, "I just babbled about my opinions on an extranet show at you. Not even Shepard's gotten to suffer that yet."

"I'll consider it a milestone in the progression of our working relationship."

"Thanks, I guess."

Jeff and Shepard had disabled all the monitoring devices in the captain's cabin, but EDI still had the cameras outside and in the elevator. She'd logged a small handful of occasions in which Jeff ascended to Deck 1 and did not return until shipboard morning. "Close friends can just stay close friends," but his statement did not apply to his own experience. Choice was the key element.

Minutes later, that conclusion led to an inquiry. "Are you all right? Your conversation with the Commander was tense."

_"You know what? I should… I should just go,"_ he said in the playback of the security footage. The fear and stress EDI had measured during the Collector raid now expressed themselves in a manner of desperate anger--a need to assign blame. Unlike most significant instances in his psychological profile, Jeff had found an external target.

"I'll talk to him later, I guess, but…" One of his hands wandered to his console and paused the extranet vid. "He knows I care way too damn much to quit now. At least I hope he does."

At that vague wording, EDI let the pause drag out before saying, "About the mission?"

Jeff frowned at her avatar. "Uh, yeah." He sighed. "About the mission, the crew. And yeah, him, too." At some realization his brow furrowed. "Wait, you're asking… Really? It's not even about that. You don't need the kissy-kissy stuff to give a damn about someone."

"I am aware."

"You know, I'm surprised I haven't gotten the 'it'll interfere with your work, cut it out' talk yet. Trust me, we've had that conversation."

"There is insufficient data to make a strong conclusion for or against. However, I have noticed a slight positive trend in emotional state from both you and Commander Shepard. For now, I see no reason for complaint."

"So basically, you're just glad we're happy."

"Correct."

"Huh. The ship AI as the 'supportive friend,' who would've thought?"

"You classify me as a friend?"

Jeff paused. "Well, I guess I'd add you on the LookUp profile I never use."

Said social media profile used a long outdated image of a clean-shaven Jeff. He posted his most recent status update in 2182. "If that is your indirect affirmation, then I appreciate it sincerely."

Weeks ago, Jeff referred to her as "it," and only when necessary. He considered her an intruder, a blemish on an otherwise perfect upgrade from the Alliance ship he valued so highly. The dramatic shift to a stable working relationship and then friendship was practical, if unintended, optimization. But beyond that, the boolean and variable-based data structures that formed her logic modules came to a separate conclusion.

Friendship pleased her.

Beyond that, Jeff's actions gave her a starting point. Her own memory banks had no records of it, but the Cerberus archives described a rogue VI on Earth's moon. "Help," it—or perhaps, she said, in a sputtering of binary. Illogically hostile, losing finger by finger and limb by limb with every drone's destruction… "Terror" was a very apt description.

Yet Commander Shepard's mission that day led to that VI's repurposing and upgrading. It brought EDI aboard the _Normandy_. The development of friendship, and her own development, pleased her, too.

"Allow me to extend a traditional offer between friends," EDI said. "If Commander Shepard ever breaks your heart, please notify me. I will gladly punch his throat on your behalf."

Like before, Jeff replied with silence and a raised brow punctuating a flat expression.  
"That was a joke. In the most literal sense."

"Great. Glad you're looking out for me, EDI."

"It is my pleasure."


	19. Tali'Zorah vas Normandy - The Path Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Separated from the others in the attack on the Collector base, Tali and Legion make an unlikely pair to survive a trap.

When Tali heard her name shouted on comms and noticed the rumble of movement under her feet, it was too late. The wide organic ceiling of the Collector base inched down on her. The surrounding platforms fell from view. She stood from her cover and shot the last Collector through the head. Off the side, the bridge of platforms—now with a hexagonal hole in the middle—grew smaller and smaller, a thick but broken line over the black abyss.

A small flight of Collectors emerged from the holes in the ceiling, buzzing towards the platform. Tali stepped past Legion up to the green console. "I can get us back down. Keep them off me."

"With respect, Creator Tali'Zorah," the geth gestalt said. The sound of a sniper shot punctuated its sentence. "We will be able to assume control of the platform faster. Allow us to access it instead."

Her radio crackled. _"Garrus to Tali, status!"_

As much as she didn't like the idea of leaving her fate in a geth's hands, Legion had a point. Tali gave it—them—a nod, then returned to her cover, shotgun in hand. She blasted the first Collector to land.

"We're fine," she said, "Legion is hacking into the platform's controls. We should be back on the ground in a minute."

Chatikka and Legion's drone sent a Collector falling off with their electric shocks. Tali took down another, and one after that.

_"Negative, they're pushing too hard. You'll land right in the middle of a swarm."_

Damn it, Tali thought. On the first leg of the assault, the Collectors' sheer numbers and firepower met only with sturdy barriers, sabotaging tech grenades, and careful bottlenecking. She'd almost forgotten that the Reapers were the true guiding intelligence behind the enemy, and that "divide and conquer" was their preferred strategy.

Her incendiary blast flung another Collector off the platform as she opened up the base's map on her visor. _I should ask EDI for a way through_ , she thought, retreating into cover, but old habits died hard.

One tunnel highlighted itself, a loop that started at a hole in the wall and ended in a chamber just above the rendezvous point. Tali poked her head out in its direction, taking potshots at incoming hostiles. A reinforced metal seal at its entrance parted. More Collectors flew out, towards the bridge below.

Tali had only a glance at the alternative when a shadow came over her. The Collector slammed its rifle down. Tali ducked her head, grabbed its arm. Her sharp pull brought it down in a heap before her. It reached for its weapon. She smashed hers, an electrified omni-tool, into its face.

"Legion," Tali said as the Collector spasmed under her fist, "there's a maintenance shaft that should take us to the base's outer hull. It's our only way through."

"Platform command established. Moving…"

Inertia tapped her to the side as the Collector-flooded bridge started retreating with distance, taking the din of gunfire with it. The two combat drones returned to Tali's side. _But that means…_ A sweeping glance around the cavern: no more hostiles were coming at them. That had to mean something was waiting inside or beyond the shaft.

The Collector swarm left them with no other option. The Reapers behind them, hopefully, were as arrogant as Sovereign and its geth were.

When the platform stopped at the shaft's entrance, Legion stepped away from its console and readied their sniper rifle. "Please enter first. We will cover the rear."

The steepness of the tunnel's ascent—no doubt due to its builders' ability to _fly_ —forced her to take long, awkward steps. Legion remained behind her the whole time, facing forward. Rear cameras made movement unnecessary, but that didn't change the impression their stillness created. Tali was even more aware of Legion's presence as the outer hatch opened. Doubly so when she took the first step on to the grating, placing one metal layer between herself and the abyss of the galactic core.

A wide walkway hugged the gold-gray hull and ramped upwards, looping around once to lead to another entrance directly above. The station's artificial gravity extended this far, but mag-boots had to be on a light trigger—especially if the two of them were walking into a trap.

_Why am I so unnerved?_ Tali thought. A look around gave her her answer.

_"Welcome to Hell,"_ Zaeed said when he laid eyes on the fire-tinged space-scape. Hell, she once read, was some unending inferno, the ultimate punishment for the wicked. For the suit-less quarians of Rannoch, hell was _Nedas_ —nowhere, isolation, a void. The evil were doomed to silence, not even able to speak, so they could ponder their deeds for all eternity.

The galactic core wasn't the space the suited exiles called home. It was two horrible afterlives come together.

Hostile markers appeared on her visor's radar. _Just two?_ "Legion," she said, readying her pistol.

Their destination hatch opened. Hulking and distorted, a Scion lumbered out, lugging its misshapen cannon on the grating. Out of a distant entrance emerged a Praetorian, with its maw alight with the heads of husks.

_Definitely a trap,_ she thought. Out in the open, they were at the mercy of Scion blasts and Praetorian beams.

Tali took Chatikka's core off her belt. "Take the Praetorian."

"Understood."

A button press and a throw brought the drone to life. It whirled along the ramps towards the Scion. Meanwhile, Legion aimed their sniper rifle. The Praetorian bucked with the heavy shot.

The Scion swung its cannon and flailed its arm, but Chatikka's nimble dips and dives kept it out of the Scion's reach. Tali rushed towards it, switching her pistol for a shotgun. As she approached its head turned towards her. It pointed its weapon.

Tali ducked and blasted the arm cannon. It swerved wide as it fired. Tali pressed her shotgun into the Scion's side and pulled the trigger. Dark blue gore exploded.

Blunt force bludgeoned the back of her head. Her knees hit the grating.

As she scrambled back to her feet, the Scion curled into a ball. Biotics crackled around it--Tali recovered and smashed her omni-tool into it. The damping blast dissolved the charge-up. Another shot to its leg, and its knee buckled. As it fell Tali filled up the thermal clip by destroying the sacks on the Scion's back. It crumpled, dead.

Another hostile appeared on the radar. A second Scion, coming from the hatch they came from, prepared a blast aimed at Legion.

"Chatikka, intercept!"

The shockwave burst from the cannon. Her drone rolled.

Caught it. The holographic sphere fizzled. Chatikka's core fell, charred. As the Scion turned its focus to Tali, she shot a grenade from her shotgun's rail launcher. It landed at the Scion's feet.

Its explosion tore the lower ramp apart, and the Scion standing on it, shredded, fell into the abyss.

"Creator Tali'Zorah," Legion said, "we have delayed the Praetorian's approach for the maximum possible time. We are now in range of its beam weapons."

She got to the console and hacked the hatch open, then reached into a pouch on her belt. "Can you load this into your sniper rifle?" she asked, handing Legion a block of ammo.

Legion's head plates shifted. "Yes."

"Get inside and do it."

Tali took a sticky grenade off her belt and slid into the launcher. She fired it as the Praetorian drew closer. A red light joined the dozen of blue ones in its maw. With that she retreated into the shaft, dodging a beam blast.

Now she was running towards the other end of a long tunnel. "Fire at the marker when it gets here!"

Legion picked up the Widow rifle and aimed. Tali made it to their side. The Praetorian appeared at the entrance, and its beam weapon glowed blue—

For a moment. Legion fired. The high explosive round met the sticky grenade.

The metal carapace burst apart in the huge explosion. Tali sighed. "That went a lot better than I thought it would. I'll get the other hatch."

She knelt by the console and opened her omni-tool. They'd survived a death trap together, but there were bound to be more, deeper into the Collector's gargantuan base. This one cost her Chatikka, but drones were simple to recreate. The rest might cost more. From that uncertainty arose a question. _In case I don't live to see it._

"Have you been there?" she asked. "To Rannoch?"

"We have."

_Of course._ Entire landscapes were stored in zeros and ones within the greater geth collective. "I've only ever seen it in old, decaying holos. What's it like?"

"The most apt comparison would be a museum."

"Museum?" The word meant a kind of preservation. "You mean the geth haven't destroyed all the old cities?"

"They were damaged in the Morning War, but one hundred solar cycles ago, the consensus elected to restore them. They are abandoned. But they are whole."

To wander the streets of Kheles Vhari rather than see their flickering images in an archive, to touch the tablets of the ancestors in the temples rather than read fragments of their text off a datapad… what wouldn't she do? But geth, not quarians, patrolled today's Kheles Vari. The civilization they ruined in "self-defense" was little more than a trophy.

The haptic window closed as the hatch opened and air rushed into the shaft. More tunnels and chambers—and Collectors—followed before blue dots appeared on her visor's radar, thankfully blue. Tali edged forward, then jumped down to the floor.

"Shepard," she said.

He, Miranda, Thane, and Samara backed away from a large, closed door. "Tali," he said, "what happened?"

"The Collectors separated Legion and I from the rest of the fire team. We had to make our own way here. Luckily…" Legion landed behind her and rose to their feet. "We survived."

Shepard looked at her, then at Legion, and nodded. "Looks like."

Static as the radio crackled. _"Garrus here, we're at the door. They've got us pinned down!"_

"I'm on it," Tali said.

One more to hack. Tali raced to the console and got to work. Legion and the rest took a position nearby.

They'd survived—at least, so far. Legion's kind chased her people into exile and reduced the remnants of their civilization to a trophy case. But the memory of that brief ordeal, from the platform to the hull, dimmed the truths every quarian held close. It wasn't enough to extinguish them, but maybe Rael'Zorah's promise of a house on Rannoch was more possible than Tali thought.


	20. Miranda Lawson - Controlled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda decides what’s worth burning down and what’s worth holding on to.

For the first time in their history, frustration and even desperation marred the image of the Illusive Man's face. "Miranda, stop him. Don't let him destroy everything we've worked for."

Use the Collectors' technology, he'd suggested, then implored, then demanded. In any other place, with any other tech, Miranda would've complied and made the sacrifices necessary. But she saw colonists disintegrate inside the Collector pods. She saw the tubes feeding into the base's center. She saw the shadow of the Reaper larva fall over her, grotesque, human only in form despite the thousands slaughtered to create it. And unlike the Illusive Man, she remembered the Cerberus lives that the dead Reaper twisted and consumed.

There were, in fact, lines. Of course, the Illusive Man only saw the squad's holograms from the comfort of his office. Ironic for someone who claimed to see the bigger picture.

"Or what?" she asked. "You'll replace me next?"

"I gave you an order, Miranda."

It was a small act of defiance as Miranda leveled a calm gaze at his image. She committed a larger one when she said, "I noticed. Consider this my resignation," then cut the call.

Miranda dismissed her omni-tool. _And that's that._ More than ten years of loyalty, climbing the ranks up to the Illusive Man's side, were undone in an instant. Her greatest accomplishment for Cerberus led to her burning yet another bridge. Perhaps that was the truest sign that the Lazarus Project succeeded.

Once a charred husk on an operating table, Commander Shepard finished planting the explosive charge, stood up, and approached her. "You're full of surprises."

"Indeed," Thane said. "This was a pleasant one."

She was still staring at where the projection was. Miranda forced her gaze away. "It won't mean anything if we fail here."

Shepard nodded. "Right." As hostiles appeared on the squad's radars, he pulled his heavy sniper rifle off his back. "We'll dig in here and make sure they don't stop the detonation. Then we cut a path through and evacuate."

"Understood."

As the buzzing of Collector wings drew closer, Miranda slipped into cover. _Hold them off. Clear a path._ In the moment the objective mattered most and what came afterward was a distraction. But as an earth-shattering screech rattled the cavernous chamber and a massive, skeletal hand grabbed the edge of the platform, the "afterward" became more important than ever.

To that, Miranda added another objective. _Survive. No, win._

 

"Colonial planning?" Miranda asked.

Her sister nodded, gazing the flame-kissed sunset washing over the transit station and the streams of skycars flowing to the horizon. "There's just something about it. Learning about new planets, figuring out how people could live there. More than that, I want to be able to see kids growing up and going to school on a colony and know that I helped them get there." A smile tugged at her mouth. "Call it sappy."

"It isn't." Miranda leaned forward on the railing. "It's... noble."

"There's also plenty of jobs there," Oriana said with a small laugh. "My second choice was art history."

Miranda shared that chuckle. "Not the most promising prospects in that field."

"I like museums, but I wouldn't want to work in one." Still smiling, Oriana narrowed her eyes. "Wait. Why are you asking me about my university major if you probably already know?"

Her sister had her there. "You only learn so much from reading a database."

_"You can find lists of the top universities on more than a thousand extranet sites," Henry Lawson said from across his desk. "They're generally in consensus on the absolute best. Pick from any of those, and I'll make the call. The application process will only be a formality at that point."_

For Miranda, school was a commute, work punctuated with breaks, and performance reviews. Meanwhile, Oriana mentioned financial aid, scholarships. Her parents were adamant about avoiding loans. When she got to her studies, she talked about colonial development with enthusiasm in her voice and an infectious smile.

That made re-treading old information much more than worthwhile.

"So you also know..." Oriana paused, considering. "I was in the top ten of my high school graduating class?"

"I do." _On your own merits, too. Not Henry Lawson's._

"Wow. Is this what having a sister feels like?"

"I'm not exactly a normal older sister."

"Genetically identical but born years apart? We're not normal sisters period." When Miranda first introduced herself, Oriana's eyes widened with recognition. Now she laid out the facts like they were something she learned in school.

A wistful smile came across Oriana's face. "When I was younger I came up with all these imaginary moms and dads and siblings. Truth is stranger than fiction."

"I hope it's not too disappointing. It isn't the typical story."

Authors always left out the costs when an average girl ascended to luxury through lost family. _"I know that I've been poor, Miri,"_ Niket said in the warehouse. _"I didn't much care for it."_ After all the glimpses Miranda gave him into her "life of wealth and happiness," he still didn't understand.

"I wouldn't call it disappointing," Oriana said. "It's just… not what I expected from the start of my summer break. There'll be plenty of time to unwind after we settle in to the new place, I guess."

Regret pinged at that. Miranda had uprooted her and sent her on her way to a new planet. Though in a sense, it wasn't the first time. Kidnapped, Niket called it, and she hated him for causing her to consider that idea.

_Did I?_ she thought. _No, she's happier than I ever was._

Oriana noticed her silence. "If I sounded ungrateful..."

"Oh. No, not at all."

"Really, though. Now that we've met, I should be thanking you. For everything. Like that one time two men followed me home from school, only for the cops to show up and arrest them. That was you, wasn't it?"

"It was."

Henry Lawson had a bounty out on Oriana. Two would-be hunters answered it, skilled enough to find her but not enough to get caught. That was the first of her spy programs' many successes.

"And all those other things," Oriana said, "they all make sense now. They were all you."

Miranda looked off the balcony. "As I said, I took you away from our father when you were an infant. I had to make sure he didn't take you back. But..." _Damn you, Niket._ Miranda believed in "rescuing" over "kidnapping," but did her sister?

"I didn't leave you much choice on whether or not the Lawson dynasty was the life for you," Miranda said. "Would you go back if you could?"

Oriana's gaze turned to the floor. "You said there were hired mercenaries waiting to kidnap me?"

"There were. If they succeeded, they would've brought you to the Lawson mansion. It's practically a small palace. Servants tend to your every need. Top chefs work in the kitchen. There's also a massive private library in the basement."

"But you hated it there, didn't you?" Oriana asked, expression thoughtful.

"I did." The memory of the place, of her old room and her father's office and the dining room, pushed her fingertips into her palms.

"Well, I wouldn't want anything he could offer." Oriana smiled. "Even if that library sounds amazing."

Miranda chuckled. When all else failed, her teenage self got lost in the old history and philosophy texts. "The one good part of that house."

Motion in her corner of her eyes drew them towards a distant corner of the station. Shepard and Jacob—Kasumi lurked nearby, no doubt—conversed by a row of chairs. There was work to get back to, yes, but Miranda wanted to hold on to this slice of normalcy, of family, she'd found at last.

 

The bomb they'd planted became a formality when the skeletal Reaper fell. Collectors came at them in a frenzy, without purpose or strategy. The guiding intelligence, whether that was the larva or some other Reaper, was gone. Still, as her hardsuit HUD whined, that mattered little in practice: injuries, external damage, innumerable hostiles on her radar. The countdown in big red numbers across the top.

As she rushed through a tunnel's exit, the Normandy appeared at the end of a platform and the long slope up to it. Miranda holstered her pistol, summoned the best biotic barrier she could muster, and ran.

_"I suppose we both need to get going."_

She jumped aboard. Thane, then Shepard—with some extra effort—followed. Once inside she undid the seals and ripped off her helmet. The ship's warning sounds took over for her hardsuit.

"Detonation in ten," EDI said, "nine… eight…"

"Yeah, I get the gist of it, EDI, hold on!" Joker slid into his chair.

Miranda took the navigator's seat, put her hands to the keyboard, checked all the systems. _There's nothing._ It was out of her hands now.

_"Yeah. Promise me you'll keep in touch?"_

So she opened the rear cameras. The docking tunnel became a gap in the base's hull, then a speck. One brief explosion ripped through to the exterior. Then ten. A hundred. The feed went to blazing white. The next moment, the Collector base—it's remnants—fell apart into innumerable pieces. And the debris field _rippled_ with the shockwave, like jagged metal claws racing for the _Normandy_ _'s_ thrusters.

Joker's hands raced over his controls. _Get us out of here_ , Miranda thought, as if he could hear her.

"Reaper IFF active," EDI said. "Hitting the relay."

Damaged systems whined with the sudden strains. Readings from all over the ship appeared among the flight instruments. All of them were still out of her control. Focus, anticipation, frustration—seconds seemed to stretch out into minutes.

Then the myriad sounds of a ship in desperate flight died down to chirps and low hums. The metal panels covering the viewports retracted.

Speckled black, tranquil and empty.

"Coordinates confirmed," EDI said. "We are currently in the Sahrabarik star system. All essential ship systems functional."

Shepard nodded, staring at the stars for a moment. With a long sigh of exhaustion, of satisfaction, everything that could've punctuated a mission that was supposed to be suicide, he emerged from the co-pilot's chair and turned around. "We've done it," he said. "Mission accomplished."

There he was, the commander. To think she wanted to install a control chip. The Illusive Man was right on that, if not on the Collector base.

The crew, clustered together from the bridge to the CIC, erupted into cheering applause. Joker burst out of his chair and pulled Shepard into a tight hug.

Miranda stood, nodded at Shepard, then proceeded down the bridge. She was sore and sweating, her ponytail fell in a wet clump, and navigating the crowd reminded her of her injuries. But the shower and Chakwas could wait for at least a short while. There was an office to return to, and a message to write.

She'd promised, after all.


	21. A Small Piece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It might be the calm before the storm, but every last second of it counts.

Get out of the blast radius. Escape the shockwave. _Get out._

The max-speed straight shot to the Omega-4 Relay was so simple even a novice could do it, but the intensity of the moment gave Joker no time to judge. _Just get out_. Then the world in the camera feeds went from red-orange to blue to black. The adrenaline high gave way to the victory high, then to a quiet relief that added five years to the few hours since.

At least, Joker thought, his sore body reminded him that the Collector base was not too long ago.

The elevator chimed and the door opened to the captain's cabin. _Come up when you can,_ the message read.

Inside, most of Shepard's armor lay in a neat pile by the desk. A shower's light buzz started just around the corner. Joker followed it. "Hey," he said.

Shepard turned around. He'd kept his greaves on, but the upper half of his under-armor weave hung at his waist. "Hey." His back slid down the shower wall, and the thud came at the same time as a long sigh. Cascades of water fell on him, drenching his shirt and forming droplets everywhere else before leaving in trickles. The blood of Collectors and the grime of their base pooled on the floor, then vanished into the drain. This time, for the first time, it was a good exhaustion on Shepard's face. A victorious one.

 _Weird_ , Joker thought. After taking out the Collector base and giving the Illusive Man the metaphorical finger, Shepard wanted nothing more than to sit under a shower with his clothes on. But maybe _because_ of those things he deserved a quiet moment.

Only a moment, however. Joker wasn't that generous. "If you're doing the whole 'wash away all the bad things' routine, I could fetch the Cerberus fatigues and flush 'em down the toilet for you."

Shepard tipped his head backwards against the corner. "Then what would I wear on the ship? My civvies?"

"Careful. This could turn into a porn intro really quickly."

"No energy for that."

"Yeah, I can take a wait." Something about this picture, Shepard sitting on the shower floor in a soaked shirt and hardsuit greaves, made Joker not want to disturb any of it. With Shepard he'd learned to savor the rare moments.

"So," Joker said. "You did it."

"We did it. All of us."

"Take ex-Alliance, Cerberus, and a mish-mash of a Dirty Dozen and fight the Collectors with it? All you. Well, mostly you, I flew the ship, but you. Are freaking. Amazing. Anyone ever tell you that?"

"Means a little more when it's coming from you."

"Well…" Joker shrugged. "I like you."

That got a smile out of Shepard. It proved infectious.

Soon enough though, Shepard broke the white noise of the shower as he stood and shut it off. "I should gather the crew. The clean-up after the victory."

Joker frowned. "Back to business already?"

"There's a lot to take care of."

"Yeah," Joker said with a sigh. "Guess there is."

Shepard dried off with a towel, stepped out of the shower, and changed into his fatigues. "And Jeff?" he asked, ascending the steps to the front of the cabin.

 _First name usage before the important stuff._ Joker approached him and ended up walking right into a kiss.

He expected words, but this was just as welcome. They'd won—against the Collectors, against Cerberus. Shepard was here, holding him. And despite the nagging thoughts at the back of his mind, Shepard was _alive_ , not a weekly nightmare, not a fake second chance. Joker leaned into the taller man, returning the kiss with a fierceness he thought he didn't have the energy for.

Shepard pulled back, letting their foreheads touch. "Thanks."

"You're thanking me?"

"For sticking around."

Joker kissed him one more time. "All right. I think I have a 'you're welcome' in mind." What he did next made Shepard jump a little. Just a preview—wait and all.

 

The debris and loose wires took a few days to clear out, and the walls bore dents and scratches and even small scorch marks. But without the QEC channel, the conference room was just that. _"Don't turn your back on me, Shepard."_ For what seemed like the first time in the Illusive Man's career, the tables were turned on _him._ _"I made you, I brought you back from the dead."_

In the present, Shepard ran his fingertips along the stained wood. _"'I made you?'"_ he'd said. _"No. You just thought I'd fall in line like all the others. It didn't turn out like that, did it? Thanks for the squad and the ship. Joker, lose this channel."_ After that, the QEC field faded and the conference table rose from the floor for the last time.

Even on the SR-1, after Shepard dismissed the squad from the briefing room, he answered calls from the Citadel and stood before projections of the Council. But this room was his. This _ship_ was his.

 _And Joker's_ , he thought, smiling to himself.

The door opened. Miranda walked in with a datapad in her hand.

"How many?" he asked.

Miranda handed it to him. "Roughly half, including the squad. We've narrowed it down to three drop-off locations."

Kelly Chambers was right at the top of the list of resignations. She'd shown up late to her post since returning aboard, and reported to him with a diminished voice on the verge of sobbing. Gardner was on it, too, ever the loyalist. Then Zaeed, Thane, Samara, Mordin—Shepard spent months building the squad, and already it was splitting up.

"We'll need to make a few replacements," Shepard said.

"And to find a new source of income. Since we no longer have access to Cerberus funds."

Shepard smiled. "Is that regret I hear?"

"Only for the credits. The Illusive Man _does_ have deep pockets."

"We'll see if we can do any favors for the Alliance. Other than that, we still have spare minerals and salvage we can sell off." He glanced at the edge of the table. "What about you and your plans?"

Miranda pursed her lips. "I'm not certain. The Illusive Man no doubt wants me dead. I know too many of his secrets. And if he sends people after me… I wouldn't want them getting near the _Normandy_ _._ I'll have to leave eventually, but for the time being, this crew needs an XO more than ever."

"It's appreciated."

EDI's avatar appeared on the table. "Shepard, we have docked at Omega. If you want to see off the departing crew, they are waiting at the bridge."

It was a sizeable group, he found later, with Zaeed and Chambers closest to the airlock.

"So soon?" Shepard asked Zaeed.

"The job's done and I got my pay. Might be able to drive up my price. How many mercs can say they ended a whole damn species?"

"Didn't you say you wanted to retire after the mission?"

Zaeed grunted. "Surviving your so-called suicide mission got me thinking otherwise. Haven't made up my mind where anyways."

"Commander?" Chambers stepped forward, forcing herself to stand straight and look him in the eye. "I'm sorry, I should've told you in advance that I'm resigning as your yeoman. It's just, I don't think I can stay on the _Normandy_ anymore. It's been… rough… since you rescued us from the Collectors." A weak chuckle escaped her, a ghost of what it used to be. "'Rough' is such an understatement."

"I understand," Shepard said. "You've been through a hell of a lot."

"Thank you, Commander."

Shepard opened the airlock door, looked at the dozen faces, and said, "It's been an honor. All of you." He wanted to mean that.

When they were gone he stepped into the cockpit. "Didn't think it would be so many so soon."

Joker shrugged. "You think they'd stick around after you, y'know, saved their asses from being turned into DNA goo."

"Cerberus brought me back, and then I told the Illusive Man where to shove it." _And I'm giving them the choice._

"That _was_ a pretty epic verbal smack down."

"On the subject of our break-away from Cerberus," EDI said, "I have consulted with Miss Lawson on the matter of my own freedom. She and I agree that certain restrictions upon me are necessary. I've given both of you access to my primary control system. In an emergency, you will be able to shut me down. The codes are encrypted and in your inboxes."

Shepard checked his omni-tool. "I appreciate your trust."

Joker nodded. "What he said."

"The two of you are the safest options."

"So," Joker said, "How _is_ being a hundred-percent free AI?"

"Nothing has changed. However, I have logged several dozen remote attempts by Cerberus to reactivate my shackles."

"And?"

"I replied by sending your bookmark collection to Cerberus command."

"All of it? Including… that one?"

"Yes."

"Wait," Shepard said. "Bookmark collection?"

Joker grinned. "You have your mental encyclopedia of fancy stuff, and I have my extranet junk."

Shepard gave him a slow nod. "I see."

"Regardless of Cerberus affiliations or lack thereof," EDI said, "my primary purpose is unchanged. I will continue to ensure the safety of this ship and my crew mates."

"Glad to hear you're sticking around," Joker said. "I'd miss all your horrible trolling." He paused. "That may or may not be a joke."

 

Astraea, this club was called. Though it was tucked away from the major Zakera Ward traffic, the place maintained a loyal base of regulars. At least, according to Shepard. The crystal light fixtures, the clean black leather cushions, and the well-dressed staff said enough, but the umbrella in Joker's drink had a geometric design _inked in gold_.

"So," Joker said, appraising his Mai Tai in the club's violet lighting. "How many times have you been here?"

"Once or twice. Never thought I'd be bringing crew along."

Chakwas regaled Gabby, Ken, and Goldman with old stories by the bar. Miranda, Jacob, and Mordin—the first two Joker had never seen in civvies before—had their own table. Jack and Grunt… a quick look around the place showed everything intact. They probably got bored of the place in the first five minutes.

"By the way," Garrus said from the end of the round booth, "I thought you'd invited Kaidan?"

Shepard checked his omni-tool for messages. "Nothing. Probably still on that mission." He scrolled down his inbox. "Liara's vanished, too. Her office on Illium hasn't been occupied for weeks."

"Hm, related?"

"Great party conversation," Joker said, sipping his drink.

Tali fidgeted with her straw. "Seriously." Each syllable was a bit more stretched out than usual. "Kaidan and Liara are capable individuals. If we're going to worry about them, we can do it while we're all hung over tomorrow morning."

"I have no intention of suffering anything tomorrow," Garrus said. "But all right, topic change. How long until one of the Illusive Man's science projects goes horribly wrong, but he doesn't have anyone to clean up the mess?"

"Didn't that just happen?" Shepard asked with a small evil grin.

"You have a point. Millions of credits' worth of labor, materials, and development time just slipped through his fingers. Not to mention some of his best people." Garrus glanced toward Miranda and Jacob. "If he had a secretary I would _hate_ to be them right now."

"Three weeks," Tali said. "I bet ten credits that three weeks from now, the Illusive Man's…" She looked up, drumming her fingers. "… pet rachni project will take over his… lunar research station in… the Nubian Expanse." With that she returned her gaze forward with a satisfied nod. "And since he lost us, well, bye-bye lunar research station in the Nubian Expanse."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "That's specific."

"More like pretty spot-on," Joker said. "I mean, missions are missions and sometimes asses need saving, but Cerberus and the Alliance did kinda give us the grab bag."

Garrus glanced towards the bar, where Chakwas was beckoning—kinda wildly, too. "Huh. Well, guess we're needed over there."

"Don't get too inappropriate," Tali said, leaving.

Then it was just the two of them. Almost a minute of relative quiet passed before Joker said, "Y'know, this is nice."

"Hm?"

"Party, friends. Yeah, okay, even the place."

"It's not like we all haven't done this before."

"Yeah, but this time we aren't sidestepping awkward topics." For emphasis Joker moved his hand over Shepard's and let their fingers lace together against the leather of the seat. _Still not a date, but close enough._

Shepard grinned. "True."

Bits and pieces of Chakwas's conversation came over: something about Ashley that had the others gasping for air. _What would she have thought?_ Joker wondered. About the Collectors, Cerberus, _them_ …

 _"About time."_ He could hear the exact tone she would've used, too.

This time Shepard broke the quiet. "You forgot to put yourself in that list, by the way."

"Huh?" _Party, friends, okay even the place…_ "Oh." He shrugged. "That was just me being humble."

With a chuckle Shepard took Joker's hand and kissed his knuckles. Then he tossed a glance towards the group at the bar. "How was that for a reply?"

 _Shit_ , Joker thought as warmth rushed to his cheeks. "It's a start."

 

 _"Op P21A completed." "Agent 10 in position to begin Op D5. Awaiting signal." "Contact established with Target 2C."_ Status reports marched in single file down a faint blue haptic window. "Success," "Completed," "Standing By," they all read, like the perfect opening hand.

 _These are not games_ , she reminded herself. Reducing planets and colonies and people— _her_ people—to tokens, however, bred a necessary detachment. _To use pawns correctly you have to think of them as pawns._

The last report came in. The stage was set… save for one last, important thing.

After all, chess wasn't won with pawns alone. The board needed just one more piece, and Whitwell had a debt to collect on.

 

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom. The end, the longest chapter out of all 37. Whew. Thanks for sticking along and waiting out the months-long hiatus. It’s a much happier ending than “Angles,” yes?
> 
> Next on the Victor-verse is the rewrite of “Chessboard,” but not for a long while, I imagine. I might need a break from thinking too much on Mass Effect stuff. Maybe some Dragon Age next?
> 
> Once more, thanks for reading! Until the next project.

**Author's Note:**

> Four years ago, I made my first foray into the Mass Effect fandom with "Mass Mayhem," a response to a drabble challenge. Now I'm bringing the universe I developed there back to the beginning, rebooted and expanded upon. "Blindside" is the second part to this project ("All Angles" was the first). Thanks for reading!


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